PERCEIVED SALAFI-JIHADI EXCEPTIONALISM
AND ITS EFFECTS ON CVE (COUNTER VIOLENT
EXTREMISM) POLICY ______
A Thesis
Presented to
The Honors Tutorial College
Ohio University
______
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science
______by
Matthew N. Thomas
April 2019
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Table of Contents
Title Page ……………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………………….1
Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………..2
Chapter One: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………..……………….3
Chapter Two: The Case for Islamic Exceptionalism ……………………………………………….………….35
Chapter Three: Case Study: The Islamic State ..…………………………………………………………..…...59
Chapter Four: Case Study: Northern Ireland ………………………………………….……………..……..….90
Chapter Five: Examination of Findings …………………………………………………….………..…………..109
Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………130
Approval Page ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….136
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Chapter 1: Introduction
America’s ‘War on Terror’ has been a cornerstone of US foreign policy for nearly two decades now. Although what is commonly understood to be terrorism has been in existence long before the 9/11 attack, it is only after that event that there is a major shift in policy approaches to this phenomenon. This comes about for many reasons, but the most prominent catalyst for this change is how people understand and conceptualize the nature of these threats. The violent extremist organizations that have risen to the focus during the beginning of the century are those who claim to be motivated by Islamic beliefs, sparking a worldwide debate on the nature of not only these groups, but of Islam as well. The discussion on whether
Islam was similar to other religions or stood in a category of its own circulated and remains as the foundation for how groups that claim that their operations and goals are inspired by Islam are understood. The idea that Islam is inherently different than other religions and because of this, is less likely to naturally arrive at the conditions for democracy within a state is called
‘Islamic exceptionalism.’ The groups that are perceived through this lens are almost exclusively
Salafi-Jihadi in nature and are said to seek to promote what they claim is the only true form of
Islam.
This focus on the religious dimension of violent extremism is a newer phenomenon. As the idea of Islamic exceptionalism spread, counterterrorism policy grew to adapt to the changing circumstances and evolved into what is known today as CVE policy. This shift was necessitated by the increase of the interest in Salafi-Jihadi violent extremist organizations and
3 meant as a new response to what seemed like a new type of group. This intentional policy shift is a component of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism, the idea that these groups are inherently different than non-Salafi-Jihadi groups and therefore must be treated differently. But these groups are not different, they follow the same structures, pursue recruitment in similar ways, and have the same operational challenges as regular organizations as well as other violent extremist groups. The traction that the idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism had gained continues to grow as the focus on these groups deepen. To America, Salafi-Jihadi organizations represent the greatest threat to the homeland and so many resources have been devoted to ending these groups. The programs that are issued as a response are flawed and detrimental to advocating for peace. Even though it has been shown that violent extremist groups are most likely to end through integrations into the political practice rather than through sustained military campaigns,1 the US and Europe have primarily sought a military solution to the conflict.
Why is this happening? What underlying assumptions about the nature of Salafi-Jihadi groups are preventing these actors from using proven tactics such as negotiation to seek the cessation of violence?
The rhetoric centered around this issue further makes the idea of the ‘War on Terror’ seem like a narrative of the classical style war even though it isn’t one. The idea of war draws to mind an anticipation of military force by both parties and calls forth the idea of surrender as the likely and desirable endgame. Islamic exceptionalism, as evidenced by politician quotes, public policy briefs, and popular opinion polls, remains a popular discussion piece in the public sphere
1 Seth G Jones and Martin C Libicki, “How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering Al Qa’ida” (RAND Corporation, 2008).
4 and undoubtedly impacts the ways people believe groups like the Islamic State should be treated.
What is being observed is an intellectual block surrounding these issues of Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism. For some reason, policymakers can’t seem to find the right way to interact with these groups because they are believed to be an innately different threat than they have ever encountered. This perception had to come from somewhere and has to have some underlying reasons for nearly universal adoption. What are the reasons for believing that Salafi-
Jihadi violent extremist groups are inherently different than other violent extremist organizations, and why does this perception mean that they must be interacted with in a different way in terms of policy decisions aimed at ultimately securing peace in the regions where they are active? Why have US policies towards violent extremism taken on new characteristics in the two decades since the iconic “War on Terror” was announced? Have these policy changes and decisions aided or hindered the ultimate goal or sustainable peace and why?
In this thesis, I will discuss how the idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism has impacted policy decisions aimed at preventing and/or countering Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism through an analysis on how Islam is conceptualized worldwide, both by Muslims and non-Muslims, and an in-depth analysis of two case studies: the Islamic State and the Irish Republican Army. These cases were chosen because both groups express a commitment to religion and present a religious understanding to their violence, however the global reaction to both groups were vastly different. Because the conflict in Northern Ireland occurred before the language of modern CVE was developed, we can use this comparison to understand how counterterror
5 measures were undertaken without regards to the ideological absolutism that is applied to groups like the Islamic State. In my first chapter, I will provide information on how the idea of
Salafi-Jihadism understands itself in relation to other interpretations of Islam, as well as underline the sociopolitical nature of group membership and how people come to make the choice to join a violent extremist organization and engage in violence. The second chapter outlines the argument for Islamic exceptionalism, including evidence of its prevalence in
Western society, and seeks to disprove it using information from sources such as Islamic holy texts, public opinion data, and comprehensive analyses of the World Values Survey. My case study on the Islamic State spans the third chapter, which discusses the origin and organizational structures of the group and demonstrates how the lens of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism is applied in practice. This chapter also contains information on how US foreign policy has sought to interact with the group in a primarily militaristic way with very little willingness to seek other strategies. The fourth chapter is comprised of my second case study, which addresses multiple actors within the conflict in Northern Ireland but focuses primarily on the Irish Republican
Army. This chapter acts as a mirror to the previous chapter and explains how the global attitude on a peace process involving all parties, including the IRA, facilitated a settlement that has lasted to this day. Finally, chapter five cements the detrimental effect the idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism has on efforts to seek peace in areas where these groups are present. It compares the two cases and brings in outside data to demonstrate that violent extremist groups come to an end more often through integration into the political process than through military defeat, and suggests that the Western conception of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism
6 presents them with an ideological block that makes pursuing negotiations and compromise seem unfeasible and abhorrent.
Salafism and Jihad
Salafi-Jihadism arises in and is a direct product of the modern world system. This time period is characterized by two basic things: the emergence of the modern state, and the establishment of a global economy.2 Without the conception of a modern state, Salafi-Jihadism as it is known today would not exist. It has arisen as a response to the state of world affairs and draws from the feeling that many people in Islamic societies are experiencing that they have been ‘left behind’ by the Western world. “Many Muslims feel very strongly not only that the
West never made serious amends for the past suffering and oppression it inflicted on them, but that it is currently engaged in a renewed effort to victimize and oppress them.”3 Those living in post-colonial societies still experience the lasting burdens that imperialism has left on their countries—poverty, governmental instability, and underdevelopment, to name a few—while also struggling to adapt to a world system that places them at a disadvantage.4
The general understanding of Salafism is that it responds to this by calling back to an idea of a better time (real or imagined), where Islamic society was at the forefront of the world, not the background.5 The word ‘Salafi’ comes from the Arabic work ‘salaf’, meaning
2 James Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs To Know (Oxford University Press, 2012). 3 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism” (United States Agency for International Development, February 2009), https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnadt978.pdf. 4 Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings. 5 Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton University Press, 2004).
7 predecessors or ancestors. Specifically, the predecessors that Salafi thought calls back to are the Prophet Muhammad and the first three generations of Muslims, who they believe are closer to the ‘pure’ form of Islam than contemporary Muslims. Salafism denounces the inequalities that modern systems of government like capitalism and communism perpetuate and advocates for a different path. Salafism is primarily said to be concerned with this idea of
‘returning to the roots’ of Islam and advocating for the application of Islam as a “total system”.6
This idea is prominent in early Salafi thinkers like Turabi and Qutb and comes to characterize
Salafi thinking.
Ironically, the idea of returning to an earlier, more ‘pure’ form of Islam is a completely modern conception. “The ‘glass’ of traditional faith, once broken, cannot be mended, the view of tradition that we have presented suggests that the substance and form of tradition are flexible and subject to reinvention.”7 When people are living truly in their traditions, they don’t have a word for it; only when they come to exist outside of this mindset that they need to call back to it.8 Having these words and making this appeal displays that it’s already too late to return to this notion of ‘tradition’ and that people are already thinking of that time colored through the lens of a modern viewer.
Salafists are conceptualizing Islam as being in opposition with these other systems of socioeconomic and political organization. Turabi claims that Islam persists through every facet of life, not just moral or religious life.9 He and other Salafis claim that Islam contains within it
6 Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Penguin Books, 2017). 7 Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics. 8 Wilfred Smith, “The Meaning And End of Religion” (MacMillan, 1963), 15–79. 9 Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea.
8 guidelines on how to create a just economic system, how to structure social life, and how the political system should be constituted. Salafism is Islam concerning itself with the affair of the state, something that would not have been possible before the existence of the modern world system.
The idea too of returning to a ‘base’ form of Islam implies that something along the way has corrupted Islam, and this is colored by this idea that religious shifts that happen in response to the changing world somehow aren’t justified. Salafism concerns itself with the idea of ‘true’
Islam as it was practiced by the first few (typically three or so) generations of Muslims. This idea has been taken in a few directions. Modernist Salafis seek to essentially retrieve the spirit of the revelation by going to the source and finding the universal principals of Islam that can be applied to daily life today.10 Salafi-Jihadists take a different view and seek to apply the early practices of Islam directly, taking them out of their historical context and literally apply historical, textual concepts—like the Islamic State does with the hadd punishments—in the modern day.11 They believe in a straightforward interpretation and an application of ‘original’ practices and ideology, while the modernists interpret the deeper meaning of the texts and use those lessons to guide thought and action in a context vastly different from the one these texts were originally written in.
Even if these ideas sound feasible, nobody can know what it was like to be a Muslim in the early years of Islam. Because of this, Salafi thinkers differ vastly on what they emphasize as
10 Maher. 11 Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants,” The Atlantic, March 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/.
9 the most important tenets of Islam, and how one should use these ideas to constitute their religious practices and live their lives. Many books and articles compare and contrast the many teachings of different Salafi thinkers, but for the purposes of this work, I would like to focus on the different ways Salafis conceptualize jihad and the various responsibilities that Muslims have to the religion of Islam.
Jihad is a term that has been around since the beginning of Islam. It appears in multiple passages of the Qur’an and has been a major topic of discussion by Islamic thinkers through the ages. The jurisprudential schools of Islam interpret jihad to be connected to the idea of fighting, particularly in the name of Allah and in the defense of Islam. By this interpretation there are two types of jihad, defensive and offensive.12 Only those with the highest authority can justify and call for an offensive jihad; historically this has meant the Caliph.13 Defensive jihad is different because it is meant to be a rapid reaction against an immediate threat and the proper authority cannot always sanction the actions, either due to time constrains or a lack of proper authority for whatever reason.
Modernists make a distinction between this idea of fighting others and the notion of a
‘greater jihad.’ This greater jihad is described as an internal struggle Muslims engage in with themselves to stay true to their faith and follow all the values of Islam throughout their lives.
This perspective arises in the modern era and serves to maintain the concept of protecting the faith while adapting to a new world system that intrinsically values peace over war.
12 Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. 13 Maher.
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In Salafi-Jihadist ideology, the idea of ‘greater jihad’ is an unacceptable interpretation of jihad. Jihad is the zenith of Salafi-Jihadi thought and represents to them the most important responsibility of Muslims, second only to individual faith.14 They don’t tie the sanctioning of jihad to an authority figure or set specific conditions for implementation. That misses the point, which is that Muslims, Islam, and their territory must be protected before all else. Because jihad falls above all else, Salafi-Jihadi ideology claims that it is the right, duty, and responsibility of all Muslims to answer the call to fight when necessary regardless of any and all of their other obligations. They should not wait for someone to tell them to fight, they should just fight. This leaves the judgement up to the individual, making it their responsibility to decide what constitutes a threat and what they are going to do about it. This decentralization of authority to wage jihad widens its possible appeal and facilitates individual justification for ‘lone wolf’ attacks when no large-group Salafi-Jihadist presence exists in an area.
Salafi-Jihadism then is characterized by its emphasis on violent jihad as a requisite of all
Muslims and a signifier of true Muslim identity. It puts forth narratives meant to de-legitimize non-Salafi-Jihadist Muslims and presents their own beliefs as the only true form of Islam.
Because of their radical claims, only the people who truly believe in their extreme ideology are willing to join and work to further their goals.15 Salafi-Jihadists aren’t trying to appeal to the larger Muslim community, so it’s no surprise that most Muslims don’t consider Salafi-Jihadists to be Muslims. It is a widely held belief across traditions that the killing of Muslims by other
Muslims is haram, or forbidden. Because Salafi-Jihadi groups generally place the ‘defense of the
14 Maher. 15 J.M. Berger, Extremism (The MIT Press, 2018).
11 faith’ above all else, this tenet becomes secondary to them. Not only that, but because of their belief structure, some Salafi-Jihadists don’t consider the people they harm to be Muslims. Many innocent people who identify as Muslims have died as a result of the actions of these groups, something the umma (worldwide community of Muslims) has deemed as unjustifiable.
Branching off of this, the denouncement of someone’s identity as a Muslim (takfir) is also a tricky topic. Declaring someone who is not an apostate to be one is a serious offense, and this accusation is widely perceived as something one should only do if they are extremely certain of their claim.16 Salafi-Jihadist organizations have made sweeping pronouncements of takfir on entire populations of people, something the umma has been extremely uncomfortable with. One major criticism of these groups is the prevalence of these claims, which many consider to be foolish and unacceptable to be applied on such massive scales.
This schism within Islam about who determines what is and is not Islamic is not a new concept. Before the rise of modern-day Salafi-Jihadism, other sects of Islam have held varying viewpoints of what qualifies someone as a Muslim. Once a religion has moved so far away from its origin point, both in time and in structure, it’s hard for the resulting sects to determine what is and is not within the folds of the religion. Due largely to literacy and mass communication, the ability to engage with religious source material had increased dramatically and interpretation of texts like the Qur’an are much easier for more people to undertake.17 Salafis are, in a way, engaging in this idea with their desire to return to the ‘roots’ and to ‘pure Islam;’ although ‘pure Islam’ is not something that really exists in the time of the Prophet and certainly
16 Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. 17 Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics.
12 doesn’t exist now. The idea that there is a right and a wrong way to practice a specific religion is a relatively new way to look at beliefs and was arguably not the way people typically thought about religion in the time of the Prophet.18
Regardless, today there are debates arising about what qualities sects identifying themselves as part of a larger religious tradition need to have in order to be considered a part of that religion. Arguments have been made for the adoption of some real interpretations of the same religious texts, the following of specific key practices, and the consensus of the community. None of these hold within them the authority to definitively tie sects together as all being part of one larger religious tradition, but work together to suggest that there is a reason to categorize different practices and beliefs the way that they are categorized.
The Hasan-Wood Debate
Throughout time, many religious traditions have had to grapple with sectarian divides and conflicting ideas of what it meant to be affiliated with them. These debates often play out internally, but the discussion surrounding how to define Islam has captured the interest of people all over the world, both in self-identified Muslims and non-Muslims. This is happening in part due to the relationship between Salafi-Jihadists and Islam becoming a mainstream concern and debate.
18 Eickelman and Piscatori; Smith, “The Meaning And End of Religion.”
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Though they weren’t the first to write on it and certainly won’t be the last, many have come to identify Graeme Wood and Mehdi Hassan as the two poles of this argument as their articles went viral shortly after publishing, sparking a larger debate as people engaged with their writing. Both of them use the case of the Islamic State to make their argument, a group which has captured much of the public attention on this issue because of their relevance to current world events and the emphasis on their activities by mass media.
Graeme Wood argues that the Islamic State is founded in real, though extreme, interpretations of the Qur’an. He claims that the way that the leadership of the group analyzes and presents their interpretation of Islam isn’t nonsense and does manifest in a form that can be reasonably traced back to the texts.19 To Wood, claiming that the Islamic State is not Islamic isn’t only wrong, but also unhelpful. In a religion that is open to many interpretations, it’s hard to denounce a well-argued interpretation even if it is morally bankrupt and lacks support from an overwhelming percentage of the umma.
After Wood’s argument was published, Mehdi Hasan wrote a direct reply to his argument and published it, making the counterargument that the Islamic State is “inherently and primarily political, and is a result of political events over any sort of motivating religious ideology.”20 For Hasan, religion is only a justification for the Islamic State. It acts as a way for members to pretend that their involvement isn’t just to advance their own self-interest.
“Religion, according to this view, plays a role not as a driver of behaviour but as a vehicle for
19 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants.” 20 Mehdi Hasan, “How Islamic Is the Islamic State?,” New Statesman, March 10, 2015, https://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/03/mehdi-hasan-how-islamic-islamic-state.
14 outrage and, crucially, a marker of identity.”21 The people who join the Islamic State, to him, are often thrill seekers or driven by the need to belong to and protect an “imagined community of Muslims;” they’re looking for excitement or a sense of purpose they don’t have in their own lives.22
This ideological debate might seem like a distraction from the very material aspects of violent extremism that manifest in conflicts across the Middle East and result in numerous deaths as well as contribute to regional sociopolitical instability. But these conversations have very real consequences that may not be immediately apparent if people become too caught up in any one side of them. The way groups and organizations are perceived in general affect how relationships between them and other groups and their role in the political situation at large are conceptualized. If people believe that Salafi-Jihadists are acting in conjunction with some reasonable notion of religious justification, their interactions with them will be coded by a religious lens, and their strategies for dealing with their actions and efforts to promote peace will inevitably be framed using religious means.
Who then gets to decide what is and is not Islamic? Who speaks for Islam? These are questions that are also often debated endlessly to the point that it’s nearly impossible for scholars to move past them. Questions like these bring up many overarching and implicit moral, ethical, and philosophical questions as well. How do you legitimize or de-legitimize someone’s religious claim to something and when should you? Is there a way to address everyone’s religious claims? If so, should you try? If you can, is it worth scrapping everyone’s? Is that fair?
21 Hasan. 22 Hasan.
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How do we as humans decide to what degree the sanctity of someone’s religious claim must be preserved, and what do we do when we can’t morally afford people these protections of personal belief and practice? To summarize, where do we have to draw the line on religion?
These are all some intense questions that could span lifetimes of research and still not result in satisfying answers. These are questions that historically, people have always had to grapple with whenever religious components complicate a situation; religiously motivated violence is by far not a new phenomenon. None of this is new or unique to Islam as a whole or to Salafi-Jihadism in particular, and yet when conflicts including a sizable Salafi-Jihadi presence are examined, the US and other Western nations seem to be at a loss for how to mitigate the situation short of just eliminating all the Salafi-Jihadists. Measures taken in the past to counter or prevent Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism have been largely unsuccessful, and everyone seems to be caught in a rut with this particular issue.
The existence of the Hasan-Wood debate displays that the way Salafi-Jihadi groups are conceptualized is different than the way violence involving religion in the past has been. What the rise of Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism has resulted in is the shift from thinking of these groups not as terrorists (emphasizing their actions), but as extremists (emphasizing their ideology). Of course both action and ideology play a role in how groups operate, but the shift in focus away from traditional modes of counterterrorism to the newer ideas surrounding CVE policy has been triggered largely due to this desire to understand groups like the Islamic State and the understanding that something sets them apart from other violent extremist organizations.
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A lot of the issues that policymakers have when addressing Salafi-Jihadist groups tend to be thought of as particularly different from the issues they have when dealing with other violent groups. They treat Salafi-Jihadists as exceptional because of it, and their interactions with them are characterized by these thoughts. I would like to use the term ‘Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism’ to refer to this idea. Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism, as I use it, is the idea that something about Salafi-Jihadists and their organizations are inherently unique and different from other organizations to the point that they exist as a category of their own and must be dealt with in ways specifically tailored to them, and not other methods typically employed in countering or preventing violent extremism, religiously-motivated or otherwise.
Political Psychology and the “War on Terror”
So where did this idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism come from? Why do policymakers feel the need to address these groups separately? Part of this is that there has been a great deal of time, scholarship, and media attention focused on micro analyses; studying specific groups like Al-Qaeda, single attacks such as the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, or certain tactics like suicide bombing. The focus is on explaining phenomena rather than understanding the groups on a core level. The combined synthesis of these incidents over time produce a literature highlighting the differences.
The coining of the term ‘War on Terror’ provides people with a simple version of reality that is easy to understand and may make them feel secure. It brings the obscurity of nonstate actors committing violence into words easily understood through the familiar lens of war. The presentation of CVE efforts as warlike furthers the justification of military action and the
17 perception that the only possible solution is through violence. The idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism works alongside the mentality of the ‘War on Terror’ by presenting these groups as inherently incapable of compromise and therefore only able to be dealt with through violence.
But at a closer look these groups aren’t all that exceptional. Too little emphasis has been placed on understanding the organizational functions of these groups as being no different than other violent extremist organizations, but also no different than nonviolent organizations.
Salafi-Jihadi groups are “ordinary organizations operating at a tremendous disadvantage,” and that the public doesn’t seem to be satisfactorily aware of that.23 Public opinion isn’t divorced from political action; and the way information is presented, stressed, and circulated had made the sensational aspects of Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism more prevalent that the practical knowledge.
Holsti, a political psychologist, thinks the answers to the question of how states behave within the international system can be better understood through the analysis and application of the national role conception framework. He wants to know what kind of information can be obtained from knowing how individual policymakers conceive of their role in the government and their state’s role in the international system.24 Role is about behavior, and manifests as a combination of role prescriptions (norms of behavior for a position) and role performance
23 Jacob Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma (Princeton University Press, 2013). 24 K. J. Holsti, “National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 14, no. 3 (September 1970): 233, https://doi.org/10.2307/3013584.
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(action within a position).25 Role conception then encompasses the way people think about their role and what they believe it entails.
Holsti wants to make the assumption that the people that make up state leadership and decision making know how the country’s status is perceived and will act accordingly. He says that internally defined role conceptions usually come before “externally derived role prescriptions.”26 National role conception to him “includes the policymakers' own definitions of the general kinds of decisions, commitments, rules and actions suitable to their state, and of the functions, if any, their state should perform on a continuing basis in the international system or in subordinate regional system.”27 It’s unsure exactly what within a state has the greatest impact on national role conception. Systemic factors matter too—it’s the stage on which the role is played and the place that gives the role meaning and contextualizes it—but their effects are varied by factor and by state/situation.
The narrative of the “War on Terror” resonates strongly to numerous Americans and has come to play a large part in American foreign policy decisions. Because of the past relationship the United States has had with Salafi-Jihadists, many see it as a responsibility of the state to be a major opponent of these groups and do whatever can be done to crush them. They are perceived unequivocally as ‘the enemy’ and themselves the root cause of a problem. Applying this framework to the issue of Salafi-Jihadism reveals a possibility: that the extreme antagonism of Salafi-Jihadists is blinding policymakers to a larger problem, therefore preventing them from
25 Holsti. 26 Holsti. 27 Holsti.
19 finding solutions that promote peace and diminish the possibility of violence. Though Salafi-
Jihadist organizations are nonstate actors, the same idea applies to them: their ascription of
America as the root of all Western evil prevents the possibility of peaceful resolution and places their narrative as one of endless, inevitable struggle.
Holsti’s model has not been explored to the degree that it can be verified as a useful way of thinking about state behavior. Only a minute amount of research has been conducted using his theoretical framework, and those that have tried it have come into issues collecting data and advocate a need for further research. What Holsti does for us then is not providing a well-tested model, but a new way of approaching this issue. Holsti encourages us to look at individual motivations and try to understand that organizational actions consist of individual actions contained within and dictated by a predetermined operational and organizational structure. Channeling the essence of Holsti’s work would then require that two things be examined to better understand Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism: the organizational structure, and the individuals within it.
Understanding the Choice to Participate in Violent Extremist Organizations
Deciding to join an organization that carries out violent acts is a multi-step process.
People make these choices through reanalyzing their situation at many steps, and the progression may not be linear but have moments of withdrawing or reconsidering participation.
Understanding the overlying structure of these organizations provides both a frame of
20 reference with which to begin to understand the choices people make within them and insight as to how they conceptualize the purpose behind their actions.
The organizational structure of violent extremist groups share a basic framework, and have done so across time and place. The idea of violent extremism is not new, nor are the groups that carry out violent extremism now fundamentally different than those that operated hundreds of years ago. The modern era has not changed the core institution of violent extremism because these organizations essentially operate under a timeless model of human behavior that establishes conditions for membership and provides them a worldview that can be adopted as an internal narrative and act as a motivator as well as an adviser for specific thoughts, feelings, and actions.
“The act of joining a movement is an assertion of identity, and thus, membership in a movement always begins with a statement of ‘we believe’ or simply ‘we are’.”28 This primary identification with a shared set of values and experiences establishes the ‘in-group’. Identity has two crucial components: internal identity and external expression; it’s not enough to have these shared values and experiences, but members of the in-group will share mannerisms, styles of dress, lifestyle choices, and/or other markers of identity that makes it easy for members to distinguish other members.29 It is in the interest of violent extremist organizations to have objective definitions of what is required for in-group membership due to the nature of the narrative they seek to employ.
28 Berger, Extremism. 29 Berger.
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For every in-group, there is an eligible in-group. This consists of people that, should they adopt all the requisites of membership, have the possibility of joining the in-group. To be considered part of the eligible in-group, there may be requirements that may or may not be attainable by people who do not already possess them. For example, if an LGBTQA+ activist group required that its members identified as an LGBTQA+ identity, a straight cisgendered man would be ineligible to join, so would never be a part of the eligible in-group. On the other hand, if an animal rights group required members to be vegetarians, you could become a member of the eligible in-group if you were or became a vegetarian.
Every in-group defines their existence in the context of the existence of an out-group.30
This group consists of all people who are not members and are not eligible to become members. Not every in-group thinks or behaves in hostile manners against their out-group but if they do, it could signal a possible shift in the in-group towards extremism. “For this to happen, the out-groups must also be clearly defined through a narrative process of identity construction that parallels the construction of the in-group definition.”31 Extremist views arise out of the construction of a narrative that clearly defines two sets of people in simple terms and links them in a struggle. The in-group must feel threatened by the out-group and also believe that as long as the out-group exists, their own wellbeing cannot be guaranteed.32 This narrative must act in a way that members of the in-group perceive no possibility for
30 Berger. 31 Berger. 32 Berger.
22 compromise with the out-group for it to be considered extremism. The narrative has to invoke a feeling of crisis and then provide opposition of the out-group as the solution.
Many violent extremists don’t expect to see the full accomplishment of their group’s goals within their lifetimes.33 They see their own actions as part of this narrative that their ideology is based in, and act as participants in a larger chronicle of struggle and strife. The end goal of all violent extremist groups is elimination of the out-group that they define their existence against, often through the form of genocide.34 This is seen as a natural endpoint and is presented as a defensive form of destruction meant to secure the lives and livelihoods of the in-group that was supposedly provoked into violent action.
There are key differences between ideological leaders and regular members of all violent extremist organizations that must be addressed when examining motivation for participation in violence. The way they come to involvement in the group is different and must be addressed separately. Recruits come to these groups after undergoing a process of radicalization, either through engagement with online texts or forums or by meeting with a physical person or group and adopting their ideology.35 Groups of people can also radicalize together, often reinforcing the ideas to each other and creating a group culture of radicalization. Social relationships are a very strong motivator for joining and/or remaining in violent extremist organizations.36 People like violent extremist organizations because they have clearly defined sets of rules and requisites for membership and are comprised typically of
33 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants”; Berger, Extremism. 34 Berger, Extremism. 35 Farhad Khosrokhavar, Radicalization (The New Press, 2015); Berger, Extremism; Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. 36 Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma.
23 likeminded people with similar beliefs and goals.37 This sort of structure provides people without the capacity to fulfill their social needs elsewhere with an authentic and real connection to other people. It’s no surprise that these groups are arising more often in contexts where the social sphere has suffered, and civil society is largely lacking.38
There are multiple models for radicalization. Khosrokhavar identifies the steps towards radicalization as “preradicalization, identification with the radical movement, absorption of the extremist doctrines, and finally direct involvement in violent acts.”39 He makes the argument that “people become radicalized when they feel a profound sense of the injustice inflicted on them and on the group to which they believe they belong, and when they feel that a reformist attitude cannot remedy that injustice.”40 This is another way to say that when people feel helpless and that their voice isn’t being heard (i.e. they don’t have access to state structures that are meant to give them a peaceful platform to voice opinions), they feel the need to turn to other means (violence) to air their grievances and advocate for change. He emphasizes time and time again that the people who most often become radicalized are socially, psychologically, politically, and/or economically oppressed by the circumstances they live under. These people perceive no other opportunity for advancement other than violence and/or crime, and radical communities offer them a sense of purpose and a means of upward mobility otherwise inaccessible to them. Khosrokhavar is focused on the lack of integration of many individuals within society and identifies that as the strongest motivator for people to become radicalized.
37 Berger, Extremism. 38 Gabriel Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (The University of Chicago Press, 2003). 39 Khosrokhavar, Radicalization. 40 Khosrokhavar.
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Khosrokhavar’s model doesn’t explain why, even though every person experiences the same government and society, it’s only a very small fraction of people that turn to violent extremism.41 He is too focused on the ‘underlying conditions’ argument and presents radicalization as a clear, predictable narrative when realistically, the path to radicalization is a bit more nuanced.
Berger takes a more psychological approach to the explanation of radicalization, and grounds his model in the concept of in-groups and out-groups. The steps as defined by him are: identification with the eligible in-group, negative views toward an out-group, perception of crisis, curiosity about the extremist in-group, consideration of the extremist in-group, identification of the extremist in-group, self-critique, escalation, and finally, after-action critique.42 What this model does is provide a basic framework to explain radicalization that accounts for the individual’s own thoughts about the radical ideology as a whole. It accepts that radicalization isn’t a simple linear progression, but a phenomenon where people might have second thoughts or reflect on their involvement at different points along the way.
Radicalization implies that those undergoing it are not already radical, and so coming to adopt such a different ideology is a long and ultimately individual process, though there are many outside factors at play during this process. It treats recruits to violent extremist organizations as rational individuals making choices based on their own experiences, not merely as components to a mechanism of violence.
41 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.” 42 Berger, Extremism.
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Berger’s model also allows for both push and pull factors to be accounted for. Push factors are understood to be choices that happen due to the desperation of circumstances, while pull factors often have to do with choices made based on the appeal of a lifestyle, benefits, or opportunities.43 One of the most important factors that allows persistence of violent extremism is the social networks that pull people there and the social and group dynamics that instill the desire in members to remain in the group.
It’s hard to accept Berger’s model if one has a predisposition to believe that people who commit these violent acts are troubled or mentally unstable, as Khosrokhavar believes, or evil, as much of the Western world believes. But the people who commit violent acts aren’t very different than people who don’t, and any person holds within them to capacity to do these things.44 Becoming a violent person doesn’t happen suddenly, it’s a process where people are changed so that the violence they commit becomes part of them. These people aren’t born with a predisposition towards violence like some seem to think,45 but socialized into a community that favors violence and presents it as a natural necessity given the current situation. Religious justification is one of multiple ways to accomplish this.
Religion plays into extremist movements at three crucial points: during recruitment, when convincing people it’s morally okay to use violence, and in group unification.46 All violent extremist groups have a vision, and it’s easier to construct and distribute that vision when it is
43 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.” 44 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford University Press, 2002). 45 Vamik Volkan, Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey Through War and Peace (Pitchstone Publishing, 2014). 46 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.”
26 structured around an ideology containing truth-claims. Tying a group goal to religious values and beliefs provides legitimacy in the eyes of those who subscribe to the religious ideology and accept the connection between the ideology and the group’s goals and methods as a logical progression of thought. When presented this way, the ideology is meant to stand beside politics on equal grounds; one does not dominate the other.
Even in conflicts that do not begin with a religious component, it’s easy for a conflict to become “religionized” and the worldly war becomes to many a holy war.47 When this happens, violence is likely to escalate, and it becomes much more difficult to unentangle religion from the conflict and much harder for those involved to negotiate any sort of peace. Once someone makes violence about truth-claims, it can’t be taken back, and the conflict is stained by religious ideology. The problem lies in the fact that it’s easier to justify violence when it’s for some greater purpose, so violent extremists have an incentive to present struggle narratives in religious ways. People who are likely to join these organizations also have a tendency to want to understand their lives and personal narratives in religious ways.48 Religion serves a role in the lives of these individuals by giving them a framework to understand their existence in a society that doesn’t provide them an alternative structure to gather meaning from. Religious identity is not unique in its ability to cultivate feelings of community and personal significance as well as provide people with a purpose, but in these contexts, it is easy to employ religious claims to draw in people who are seeking a sense of belonging that they lack elsewhere.
47 Mark Juergensmeyer, “Religious Terror and the Secular State,” Harvard International Review, Winter 2004. 48 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.”
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There are many ways that religious violence has been conceptualized and explained.
There are passages in multiple holy texts that suggest that committing violence in the name of religion is in some way and contexts justifiable. They contain stories about grievances and injustice that call people to act and simultaneously present a worldview that promotes the idea that salvation and divine favor are scarce and will only be given to those who are true followers and believers. Therefore, under this model, people commit violence to gain religious favor when they feel it is just to do so. This seems liked a simple enough answer, however it fails to address the complexities of what constitutes religious violence and why the amount of religious violence differs across time and space.
Schwartz argues that monotheistic traditions are much more likely to cause violence.49 If this were true, then monotheistic religious violence would happen significantly more than its polytheistic counterpart, and that violence would be higher in communities of people who were more religious. This argument doesn’t take into account the factor of textual interpretation, nor does it satisfactorily address differing degrees of violence across contexts. Not only this, but there is no way to use this theory to increase efforts for peace because it is impossible to accurately measure anyone’s religiosity.
Smith tries to understand how our ideas of religious violence has changed over time as our idea of religion has. He cites this separation between traditional notions of religion as being more about faith and new religions as complete, coherent sets of beliefs, and uses this to
49 Regina Schwartz, “Holy Terror,” in The Just War and Jihad (Prometheus Books, 2006), 191–201, http://www.brandonkendhammer.com/religionandpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-Just-War-and- Jihad.pdf.
28 display that we’re trying to understand religious violence across these two time periods that don’t necessarily share the same characteristics.50 By discussing old examples of religious violence alongside modern case studies, we’re distorting the reality of the past events with our modern conception of religion and therefore making any attempted progression towards understanding religious violence inaccurate and confusing. Because of this, it’s hard to know when violence is religiously motivated.
Juergensmeyer accepts that there’s not really a definitive way to prove that religion causes violence. He believes that religion can amplify violent tendencies, and that violent tendencies can affect how religion is interpreted.51 Violence and religion have a hermeneutic relationship that results in the tendency to amplify each other. Religion can’t necessarily cause violence, but there’s something about the presence of religion that makes violence more likely when it is or could be a part of a conflict.52 Whether that results directly from the characteristics of religion as an institution or from the co-opting of religious narratives to purposefully structure the context of a conflict is up for debate. Regardless of the cause, once it is embedded in the conflict, it must be addressed in any sort of peace process. This will be discussed further in the second chapter; however, it is something to keep in mind while proceeding.
As it turns out, not much separates religiously-motivated violence from other types of identity-based violence, such as ethnically-motivated violence. Both categories often deal with issues of fundamentalism and are primarily driven by a strong identification with a particular
50 Smith, “The Meaning And End of Religion.” 51 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, 2017), http://www.brandonkendhammer.com/religionandpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Terror-in- the-Mind-of-God.pdf. 52 Juergensmeyer.
29 ideology or worldview that structures the way members perceive the world they live in and what their place in it is. Fundamentalism is primarily concerned with preserving and protecting this worldview whilst promoting the idea that these views aren’t radical and are in fact founded in a long, enduring history, usually a history of struggle.53 Because of this, violent extremism based on identity of some kind usually has some sort of narrative attached to it that works to convince the eligible in-group that violent action is necessary for the preservation of these goals and, ultimately, of the in-group as a whole.54 These narratives construct direct threats to the existence of the identity category in order to create a crisis in the minds of individuals with the goal of provoking action.55
In the case of the Islamic State, members understand themselves to be defending the sanctity of what they believe is orthodox Islam. Their narrative is taken from a larger tradition of Salafi-Jihadism that calls for a ‘vanguard’ to rise and defend the faith against the encroaching threats.56 Similarly, the United States is seeing a rise in white supremacism and neo-Nazism in the past few decades; by their best estimates, 600 ideologically-motivated killings have been attributed to members of over 100 formal organizations between the years 1990 and 2008.57
These groups operate based on a long legacy of white supremacy in the United States and while each have their own specific ideological claims, they all draw from the same racist narratives of white supremacy and enact violence on minorities based on these ideas.
53 Almond, Appleby, and Sivan, Strong Religion. 54 Berger, Extremism. 55 Berger. 56 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, 1964, http://mappingsharia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Qutb-Milestones.pdf. 57 Steven Chermak, Joshua Freilich, and Michael Suttmoeller, “The Organizational Dynamics of Far-Right Hate Groups in the United States: Comparing Violent to Nonviolent Organizations,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 36, no. 3 (March 2013): 193–218, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2013.755912.
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For both ethnically-motivated and religiously-motivated violent extremist groups, the structural factors of the context they are operating in determine what choices are available to them in terms of recruitment, organization, and operation.58 It determines the precautions necessary to avoid things like being arrested, but also can serve to limit these organizations in their capacity for violence and the ability to become dominant societal forces. Because this violence is based in identity categories and not internationally recognized and defined states, it has a great potential to cause regional instability and can easily overflow into new areas if there is an opportunity to. An example of this is the Islamic State activity bleeding into Syria from Iraq at the start of the Syrian conflict. As a transnational organization, they have the flexibility to operate within the contexts that best suit their needs, and the instability that the conflict brought to Syria provided them with a safer base of operations.
It would be a mistake to believe that these structural factors were the only determinants of violent extremist behavior. Past arguments have cited ‘underlying conditions’ as the base causes for violent extremism, which have led many to come to some incomplete conclusions about how to address this violence.59 If this were true, and it was corrupt officials, unstable governments, and lack of socioeconomic opportunities that was causing all this violence, the logical solution would then be effective development assistance and the improving and strengthening of governmental institutions.60 Though widespread violent extremism is less likely to arise in healthy, developed states where the average person has other opportunities for fulfillment, realistically violent extremism could arise anywhere and has
58 Almond, Appleby, and Sivan, Strong Religion. 59 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism”; Berger, Extremism; Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma. 60 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.”
31 more contributing factors than merely the structure of the social, political, and economic aspects of a society.
One other important factor that tends to affect the whole of political life are the
“particularities of human choice and leadership.”61 This represents the way that people analyze their contexts and use information they have about the world around them in order to make choices. To summarize, it’s what people do. Because of the ability people have to circulate information much more rapidly than before, this is starting to affect out lives in ways that were previously unimaginable. More people than ever have access to information about world events almost immediately and the ability to formulate responses to them in record times.
Because of this, a situation in one state may provoke instant action by another state, nonstate political group, or world leader. Also covered under this category are the reactions of citizens to the action of their government, policy changes, and even the death of leaders, particularly leaders of violent extremist organizations.62 These all have a way of affecting the conflicts that the concerned parties find themselves in and could possibly alter the courses of action taken at a moment’s notice. Human behavior and life are nearly impossible to predict, and shocks like this could happen at any time and drastically change the context of the conflict.
Additionally, it has to be accepted that some things merely happen accidentally.63 This could be a side effect of a law aimed at something else, a region of a country that is particularly upset by their government, or a sudden action of an important figure. Violent extremists could
61 Almond, Appleby, and Sivan, Strong Religion. 62 Almond, Appleby, and Sivan. 63 Almond, Appleby, and Sivan.
32 stumble onto a perfect context to operate in or find the best people to pitch their ideology to, or they could fall on a string of misfortune. While trying to understand what does and does not effectively promote peace in conflicts involving violent extremists, policymakers have to do everything they can to take all the information they have into account while also understanding that they either might not know why a particular strategy worked well in one area and not another, or alternatively, why a strategy they would expect to work in one area does not.
Accepting that there are things that might not be known or understood helps efforts to counter violent extremism by allowing policymakers to pull back from strategies that, for whatever reason, aren’t making an impact.
Conclusion
Salafi-Jihadism as an ideology has been explained as a product of the modern system and a part of this larger phenomena of religiously-motivated violent extremism.64 Through examination of the famous debate displayed within the works of Mehdi Hasan and Graeme
Wood, the deep-rooted understanding of Islam as an exceptional religion is displayed, as well as how the categorization of religiosity, or lack thereof, provides the foundation on which people consider policies aimed at the Islamic State and other Salafi-Jihadist groups. Because
Islam is treated as an inherently different type of religion, policymakers treat the violence invoking Islam as a motivator as a special type of violence. Even though Salafi-Jihadi violent extremist organizations operationally and structurally fit the same general model laid out by
64 Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings.
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Berger, they are treated differently than other violent extremist organizations and are considered unable to be compromised with due to their unwavering commitment to the group’s stated goals and interpretation of Islam. What is left behind is an institutionalized conception of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism that prevents policymakers from seeking effective solutions to conflicts involving these groups and a continued reliance on methods that are ineffective towards long-term settlement.
The next chapter will begin by laying out the arguments that are made in favor of Islamic exceptionalism, which primarily hinge on the perception that Islam has a more intimate connection with its holy texts than other religions do and are less likely to naturally create an environment for fair democratic institutions. Through the use of PEW public opinion poll data, comprehensive analyses of the World Values Survey, and a synthesis of other scholarly work, it will be demonstrated that the idea of Islamic exceptionalism doesn’t hold up. Finally, it will explain that the idea of Islamic exceptionalism contributes to the creation of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism by perpetuating the idea that Islam is an uncompromising religion, so then groups that claim Islam as a primary motivator for violence aren’t capable of negotiation and participation in a peace process.
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Chapter 2: The Case for Islamic Exceptionalism
Voices both inside and outside the Islamic community perceive Islam as being inherently different than all other major religions. Islam is exceptionalized by many scholars, politicians, and the public in somewhat different ways. Some argue that the historical context of Islam as a coherent and unchallenged religion make it particularly hostile towards the modern emphasis on establishing democratic governing structures. Other arguments highlight violence that has been committed in the name of Islam and designate it as a signifier that Islam is more likely to promote violence than other religions. Both of these perceptions of Islam have affected policy decisions in both Western and Muslim-majority countries and created a narrative of Islamic exceptionalism that has become hard to escape.
The Argument for Islamic Exceptionalism
Arguments for Islamic exceptionalism all make the claim that there is something about
Islam in particular that makes it less likely for Islamic societies to organically evolve a separation between religious and political institutions. The people who argue this point of view look at the rampant authoritarianism, underdevelopment, and armed conflict in Muslim-majority countries and attribute it to the unwillingness and inability of these people to democratize because of their connection to their religion. These arguments assume that something inherent and unable to change in Islam is blocking the ability of these states to become more politically, economically, and socially fair.
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These ideas are very strongly tied to the notion that Islam has a more intimate connection to its founding ideology than any other monotheistic religion.65 This connection to the distant past manifests itself in modern debates about what Islam is and should ideally be in ways that are different from other religions. Islam has a clearer documentation of what Islam was at its origin, while religions like Christianity do not; the Quran was recorded during
Muhammad’s life, but the Bible wasn’t compiled until long after Jesus was killed.66 Ideas about how Jesus lived his life are unable to be confirmed, while hadiths practically documented
Muhammad’s. There’s more verifiable information to look back to and use in Islam.
Islam is also said to have a different connection to these founding documents than other religions do. The belief that the Quran is the direct word of God has many implications for how
Muslims treat the document and use its teachings in their lives. Unlike Christianity, which uses the Bible as more of a guidebook, the Quran is more like an instruction manual. Because it is accepted to be God’s speech, the ideas presented within it should be eternal.67 This leaves less room for interpretation, compromise, and change.
Passages in the Quran suggest a necessity for all believers to fight in the name of Islam, saying things like the “believers who sit (at home), except the disabled; and receive no hurt (of fight) [sic], are not equal to those who struggle and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their person” (4.95).68 It also states punishments that are considered inhumane in the
65 Bernard Lewis, “Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East,” Foreign Affairs 84 (2005). 66 Shadi Hamid, Islamic Exceptionalism: How The Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016). 67 Hamid. 68 Syed Vickar Ahamed, English Translation of the Message of The Quran, Fourth (Book of Signs Foundation, 2006).
36 modern day; “for the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands” (5.38).69 Many also argue that the Quran promotes gender inequality by claiming that “men are the protectors and maintainers of women” (4.34) and saying that “Allah commands you regarding (the inheritance for) your children: to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4.11).70
Passages like these lead people to conclude that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
The Quran is perceived by many to be a justifier of violence against non-Muslims, especially with the rise of Salafi-Jihadi violent extremist organizations who maintain that strand of interpretation and present that rhetoric to the world. In the West, there’s also a fixation on the hadd punishments such as stoning or the cutting off of hands, and the idea of applying punishments like this in the modern day is alarming to most people. Views towards the status of women in society are also a concern for many, even those outside scholarly circles. There’s a widespread concern in the West that Muslim women are being oppressed, and some believe even the hijab is a symbol of oppression despite the complicated history of the garment and the desire of some women to wear it.71 Passages like these interwoven into political narratives about Muslim-majority countries provide a backdrop that makes arguments about Islamic exceptionalism sound appealing.
69 Ahamed. 70 Ahamed. 71 Ola Salem, “What Westerners Get Wrong about the Hijab,” Washington Post, August 17, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/08/17/what-westerners-get-wrong-about- the-hijab/; BBC News, “The Islamic Veil across Europe,” May 31, 2018, sec. Europe, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13038095; Massilia Aili, “What It’s like to Be the ‘Girl in the Headscarf,’” ABC News, April 8, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-08/wearing-the-hijab-the-girl-in-the- headscarf/9612992.
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The Quran and hadith establish what many claim is a ‘total system,’ which instructs people how to structure social, religious, and political life.72 Because it is complete on its own, it is believed by many to be inherently incompatible with democracy in a way that other religions are not. Hamid argues that even a limited familiarity with the Quran and hadith predisposes
Muslims to think about politics in a specific and unique way that makes drawing a connection between religion and politics is inevitable and immutable.73 In referencing those who support
Allah’s cause, the Quran says that “Those are the believers who, if We establish them firmly (in power) in the land, they establish regular prayer and give regular charity, enjoin the right and forbid the wrong: And with Allah rests the end of (all) affairs (22.41).”74 This passage reflects the idea that rightful and just leaders will be Muslims that create societies in which the values and practices of Islam are entrenched. People who are familiar with the Quran and hadith then are bound to believe that religion should have a direct role in shaping politics in a way that is incompatible with the democratic value of religious plurality.
Islam concerns itself with law in a way that other religious traditions have not. The existence of the sharia and its persistence across time and space is to many an indicator of exceptionalism. “Salvation is impossible without law [in Islam],” while in Christianity, faith is all you need.75 This places Islam in a position where the legal structures matter in a cosmic sense, and these structures are more or less defined or at least can be derived from the sharia in accordance with the hadith and sunna. PEW polled Muslims in 39 different countries with
72 Hamid, Islamic Exceptionalism; Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. 73 Hamid, Islamic Exceptionalism. 74 Ahamed, The Quran. 75 Hamid, Islamic Exceptionalism.
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Muslim majorities and asked if “they want sharia law…to be the official law of the land in their country,” finding that 9 countries reported that 80% or more of the Muslim population supported state implementation of sharia.76 If those reporting 70% or more are included, the number jumps to 15 countries. Large support for the adoption of laws based on Islamic scripture suggests that there might be something about the way Muslims perceive Islam that makes it necessary and proper to apply religion to politics in a way that other religious people don’t.
Public Perception of Islamic Exceptionalism
The prevalence of the idea of Islamic exceptionalism is evident not only within scholarly circles that tackle these types of complex ideas, but also circulate openly throughout the general public through news and social media. These sources give regular citizens access to simplified versions of these debates that are being played out in the political arena and allow them to form opinions based on what they are presented. No matter the news source, one doesn’t have to look very hard to find an article that discusses Islam and connects it to politics.
American attitudes towards Muslims and Islam has over time become a politically salient issue, leaving most Americans with strong opinions on a subject that they generally don’t understand the intricacies of. This gives politicians a free pass to not have to justify their actions and policy proposals because the people that support or oppose them are relying on mental shortcuts that
76 Michael Lipka, “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and around the World,” Pew Research Center (blog), n.d., http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around- the-world/.
39 make assumptions about someone’s base argument and/or core beliefs on the issue. There is a prevailing narrative in the United States about Islam that enables most people to believe that they can reasonably make assumptions about what others’ justifications are for their thoughts about Islam.
Executive Order 13769, titled “Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign
Terrorist Entry into the United States,” was issued one week after President Trump was elected into office.77 This policy is emblematic of a loud minority of Americans who hold strong anti-
Islamic views. Dubbed the ‘Muslim ban,’ five of the seven countries that it restricts travel to the
United States from are Muslim-majority countries and the discourse around the legislation has revolved around its clear bias towards Muslims and a popular perception of Islam as inherently violent religion.78
Despite this clear intention, the Supreme Court upheld the order on the basis that it never explicitly brought religion into the issue.79 Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized this decision and said that President Trump “has never disavowed any of his prior statements about
Islam…[and] has continued to make remarks that a reasonable observer would view as an unrelenting attack on the Muslim religion and its followers.”80 She makes it clear that explicit language is not necessary; the executive order is and has always been about Islam and
77 Donald Trump, “Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” The White House, n.d., https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign- terrorist-entry-united-states/. 78 ACLU, “Timeline of the Muslim Ban,” ACLU of Washington, May 23, 2017, https://www.aclu- wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban. 79 “Supreme Court’s Conservatives Side with Trump on Muslim Ban,” MSNBC, June 26, 2018, http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/supreme-courts-conservatives-side-trump-muslim-ban. 80 “Supreme Court’s Conservatives Side with Trump on Muslim Ban.”
40 represents the stance of the Trump administration on Islam as an inherently violent religion— something also reflected in his party’s tendencies. A recent PEW poll shows that 63% of
Republicans agree with the statement that “Islam encourages violence more than other faiths.”81 The strong focus on such an issue right at the beginning of a new presidency undeniably reflects larger trends of thinking within the populace and demonstrates that the
American public is engaged in a discussion about Islamic exceptionalism.
Because the president has been able so far to express these views inconsequentially, many others are finding the encouragement and the platform to do so as well. In May of 2018,
Fred Fleitz was appointed to be the new National Security Council chief of staff. He belongs to a group “that propagates the conspiracy theory that Islamists have infiltrated the U.S. government in a plot to take over the country” and has made the claim that “major American
Muslim organizations and mosques are secretly working to advance a jihadist agenda… [and they] should be neutralized as political forces."82 He seeks to advance the clash of civilizations theory and repeatedly makes Islamophobic claims.
Congressman Steve King, who was just re-elected in November of 2018, also has a long history of openly discriminating against Muslims to the degree that many attribute his views to white supremacy.83 In 2008, he said that “if Barack Hussein Obama won the presidency ‘the
81 Lipka, “Muslims and Islam.” 82 Abigail Hauslohner, “New NSC Chief of Staff Is from Group That Believes Muslims Are Plotting to Take over U.S.,” Washington Post, May 30, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/05/30/new- national-security-council-chief-of-staff-comes-from-a-group-that-believes-muslims-are-plotting-to-take-over- america/. 83 Naaz Modan, “What Happens When Muslims and Islamophobes Both Win,” CNN, n.d., https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/07/opinions/muslim-congresswomen-tlaib-omar-islamophobes-steve-king- modan/index.html.
41 radical Islamists, the al Qaeda...would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror.’ He later explained that they would supposedly do so because of Obama’s middle name."84 Setting aside that this claim makes no sense, it exemplifies the extent to which Islamic exceptionalism is ingrained in him in a very negative way.
Steve King isn’t the only Congressman with views like this. In 2017, Jeff Duncan posted an image to Facebook that “depicts a man with a noose around his neck watering a tree. The word ‘Europe’ appears above the man, with ‘Islam’ written over the tree.”85 He later removed the photograph but did not apologize for it, stating that he did not feel like he needed to. Those who spoke up against the post pointed out that “the important thing here is if you look at the image, it indicates the problem isn’t terrorism, but Islam…we think it’s terrible.”86 Duncan was also re-elected in 2018, displaying that sharing these views was not enough for him to lose popular support. His re-election reasserts that there is a considerable amount of people who share his beliefs, or at the very least, people who don’t mind them. This is not a phenomenon that should be allowed to pass unexamined.
Although Islamophopia can come from anywhere, this issue is largely split along party lines in the United States. Every two years since 2002, PEW has posed a poll asking people if they believed that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence. In 2002, there
84 Jane Coaston, “Steve King Is a Racist, and Conservatives Don’t Want to Talk about It,” Vox, June 28, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/6/28/17506880/steve-king-twitter-racism-congress-republicans. 85 Adam Benson, “Duncan Posts, Then Pulls, Controversial Image on Facebook Page,” Index-Journal, June 7, 2017, http://www.indexjournal.com/news/duncan-posts-then-pulls-controversial-image-on-facebook- page/article_05f6a788-18e7-594a-b8f0-21d9a8f0f822.html; Modan, “What Happens When Muslims and Islamophobes Both Win.” 86 Benson, “Duncan Posts, Then Pulls, Controversial Image on Facebook Page.”
42 was an 11-point gap between Democrats and Republicans (who polled at 22% and 33% respectively), but in 2016, that gap grew to 44, with an all-time high of 70% of Republicans saying they agreed with that statement.87 Muslim-Americans are far from oblivious to this; 59% of them reported feeling that the Republican party is unfriendly towards Muslim-Americans, compared to only 13% who feel that the Democratic party is unfriendly towards them.
The state of the political environment in the United States is growing more extreme and partisan. A 2017 PEW report found that “the divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values…reached record levels during Barack Obama’s presidency. In
Donald Trump’s first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger.”88 Most Americans have social circles that only include people of similar political leanings as them.89 Because of this, people aren’t engaging with diverse political opinions so much as reifying their own, and this is having a real impact on the view of Islam in America. One Muslim respondent of a PEW poll said that “a lot of us Muslims, we don’t feel safe here anymore. Trump is kind of painting a bad picture for Muslims.”90 That same poll revealed that 74% of Muslims in America say that
Trump is unfriendly towards Muslims.91
87 Pew Research Center, “How the U.S. General Public Views Muslims and Islam,” July 26, 2017, http://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/how-the-u-s-general-public-views-muslims-and-islam/. 88 Pew Research Center, “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider | Pew Research Center,” October 5, 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even- wider/. 89 Clare Foran, “America’s Political Divide Intensified During Trump’s First Year as President,” The Atlantic, October 5, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/trump-partisan-divide-republicans- democrats/541917/. 90 Pew Research Center, “The Muslim American Experience in the Trump Era,” July 26, 2017, http://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/the-muslim-american-experience-in-the-trump-era/. 91 Foran, “America’s Political Divide Intensified During Trump’s First Year as President.”
43
The rampant Islamophobia in America is directly connected to an extreme interpretation of the theory of Islamic exceptionalism. The belief that Islam as a religion is fundamentally different than other religions fuels the anxieties that Americans have about
Muslims and Islam. Although counter-violent extremist (CVE) efforts against Salafi-Jihadi groups under the Bush era were explicitly stated to not be an attack on Islam,92 it’s a sentiment that the American people seem to have lost due in part to the increasingly extreme partisanship, the rise of the Islamic State, and the election of President Trump. Views on Islam are actually worse now than they were three weeks after 9/11; 39% of Americans had an unfavorable view of
Islam then, as compared to 61% in 2015.93 More people are coming to identify Islam as the problem.
The political discussion surrounding Islamic exceptionalism isn’t confined to the United
States. A far-right activist in the United Kingdom advocates openly to “ban Islam from the
West,” and believes that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western values and forms of government.94 Though he takes an extreme view, he certainly isn’t alone. To date, 11 states
(Russia, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Turkey) have at one point either had a local or nationwide ban on the burka and/or the niqab, while others have allowed bans on hijabs in public institutions like schools or courts,
92 Brian Jenkins, “Bush, Obama, And Trump: The Evolution Of U.S. Counterterrorist Policy Since 9/11” (International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, September 24, 2017), https://www.ict.org.il/Article/2079/BUSH- OBAMA-AND-TRUMP#gsc.tab=0. 93 Shibley Telhami, “What Americans Really Think about Muslims and Islam,” Brookings (blog), December 9, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2015/12/09/what-americans-really-think-about-muslims-and-islam/. 94 Peter Walker, “Pro-Brexit Activist Said All Muslims Should Be Removed from UK,” The Guardian, January 9, 2019, sec. Politics, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/09/top-pro-brexit-yellow-vest-activist-said-all- muslims-should-be-removed-from-uk.
44 both nationwide and regionally.95 Alternative for Germany, a German nationalist party that garnered 10% of the German vote in 2017, called for limitations on Muslims that included a hijab ban in schools and a ban on public call to prayer, and did so next to proposals for increased border security in the interest of national security.96 The positioning of these ideas as well as the outright discrimination against Muslims displays that other politicians in the West subscribe to some notion of Islamic exceptionalism, and that the public supports these individuals to some measurable degree.
Rebutting Islamic Exceptionalism
All religious texts, including the Quran, have been made more accessible to the public by the modern era. There is no longer a reliance on clerical classes of people to tell others how to live religiously sound lives because individuals now have easier access to the source material themselves to draw their own conclusions from. Those who argue in favor of Islamic exceptionalism make one crucial mistake; they define Islam as being what Muslims are instead of understanding it as what Muslims do. The founding ideology does matter to some degree, but the ways these texts and debates are being understood and interpreted by regular Muslims is more important and better reflects the reality of Islam as a phenomenon rather than an
95 BBC News, “The Islamic Veil across Europe.” 96 David Rising, “German Nationalist Party Presents Anti-Islam Platform,” Text.Article, Associated Press, September 18, 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/world/german-nationalist-party-presents-anti-islam-platform.
45 object.97 According to a PEW poll, 64% of Muslims in the US believe there is more than one way to interpret their religion, which is actually 4 points higher than Christians.98
The concept that a founding ideology of anything could remain eternally unchanged is misguided and frankly impossible. The further one travels from the origin point, the more external influences have the potential to influence a collection of ideas, values, and/or communities. 52% of Muslims in the US believe that “traditional understandings of Islam need to be reinterpreted.99 The founding of Islam occurred in a time where the concept of religion was perceived entirely differently than the way people understand it today.100 The fact that people even discuss Islam as if it is one coherent and correct tradition is evidence that this shift has happened.101
Part of the case for Islamic exceptionalism is predicated on acceptance of the idea that religion is naturally and operationally at odds with secularism. A cornerstone of Hamid’s argument is that Christianity, among other religions, failed to keep secularism contained and became weaker because of it.102 It is my opinion that religions like Christianity did not become stronger or weaker because of secularism, but adapted the way modern religions need to in order to remain politically involved. Christianity has a history of formal ties to the state, but those connections were established in a time where the governing structures and capacities
97 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? (Princeton University Press, 2015); Brandon Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy, and Law in Northern Nigeria (University of Chicago Press, 2016). 98 Pew Research Center, “American Muslims’ Religious Beliefs and Practices,” July 26, 2017, http://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/religious-beliefs-and-practices/. 99 Pew Research Center. 100 Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics. 101 Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics. 102 Hamid, Islamic Exceptionalism.
46 were different. Similarly, Islam’s historical relationship to politics was inevitably characterized by the context it existed in. Because of Christianity’s position in the world at the time of modernization, Christians had to make some adjustments to better fit into the new context.
Islam as a religion has not been forced to adapt in the same way until very recently. Even though adaptations were necessary, people typically don’t say that secular democracy has prevented anyone from being Christian, nor has secular democracy prevented politicians from discussing their Christian values and advocating for policies that promote their religious views.
This suggests that it is possible to make changes to actions and interpretations without threatening the sanctity of the religion, something I believe is possible not only for Christianity, but for Islam as well.
Survey data seems to support the possibility of Islam coexisting with democracy. Based on data from the World Values Survey, after controlling for other possible factors, Muslims are no more or less likely to support democracy than Christians or members of other religions.103
Additionally, people living in democratic countries are more likely to support democracy.104
Democracy provides an open political voice and political agency to individuals in a way that other forms of government typically do not.
Rawls discusses this idea of the ‘proviso,’ where it’s okay for political figures to argue for religiously-inspired legislation as long as they can justify it in non-religious ways.105 If this is your view on secularism, it’s easy to see what kinds of objections religious people might have to this
103 M. Steven Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (Oxford University Press, 2011). 104 Fish. 105 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Harvard University Press, 1997), http://www.brandonkendhammer.com/religionandpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/DOC-5.pdf.
47 idea, especially if you view your religion as having a necessary connection to lawmaking. An alternative is to let people make religious arguments but hold strict to the institutional commitment of separation of religion and the state.106 This can be interpreted differently in different contexts, but like democracy, secularism can have slightly different applications. At its base, democracy must allow a space for religious dialogue in the political sphere to the same capacity that other voices are allowed to be heard, while religion must recognize the legitimacy of democracy.107
Analysis of the World Values Survey has found that people generally do not want religious leaders to affect the way people vote in elections; about two-thirds across religious traditions, without a major difference between Muslims and Christians.108 Although Muslims are slightly more likely than Christians to support personal piety among politicians, this research suggests that piety doesn’t matter to Muslims so much as the belief in God, as
Muslims are more likely to reject the notion of an atheist holding public office than Christians are.109 These findings suggest that Muslims may be more willing than many think to accept a
Christian in government since they share a belief in God and the basic moral values that come with it.
Many people hold the belief that Islam is not compatible with democracy. A recent PEW poll shows that 44% of Americans think that there is “a natural conflict between Islam and
106 Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2006): 1–25, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2006.00241.x. 107 Alfred Stepan, “Muslims and Toleration: Unexamined Contributions to the Multiple Secularisms of Modern Democracies,” in Boundaries of Toleration (Columbia University Press, n.d.), 267–96. 108 Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive? 109 Fish.
48 democracy.”110 These sorts of opinions are driven significantly by popular politics, news, and social media, as described above. This notion contributes most strongly to the idea of Islamic exceptionalism because it puts a hard, immutable barrier between Islam and the West, intentionally othering not only the religion itself but the countries and cultures that exist in predominantly Muslim communities. It forces a complex topic into a simple framework where reconciliation and compromise between the ideologies aren’t seen as likely options.
This is not meant to deny the reality of Muslims who have reservations about democracy. The legacies of colonialism are still real for many people, and trust in Western institutional structures can sometimes be low; sometimes just on principle,111 and other times due to assumptions about what forms these new structures might take and their subsequent effects on society.112 But to say that Islamic societies are facing difficulties with democracy is not the same as saying Islam is incompatible with democracy. There are many aspects of Islam and Muslim societies that suggest that there is a strong case for the possibility of democracy.
One of the popular arguments against Islamic democracy claims that because the
Prophet Muhammad was both a political and religious leader, Muslims are looking for a sort of theocratic government that allows for a continuation of this type of leader. You cannot separate religious and political life because Islam was founded by an individual who claimed both authorities and because of that, the ideal leader would also do so. The problem with this argument is that it conceptualizes Muhammad as the ideal leader when he was clearly meant,
110 Lipka, “Muslims and Islam.” 111 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.” 112 Ummah.com, “What Is Islamic Democracy?,” Ummah.com - Muslim Forum, n.d., https://www.ummah.com/forum/forum/ummah-com-dawah-section/questions-about-islam-muslim/441097- what-is-islamic-democracy.
49 as a prophet, to be an exception.113 Historically, religious and political authority has always been separated in Islamic societies after the death of Muhammad.114 Just because Christianity has an established religious institution as distinct from the governing institutions and Islam does not does not mean that Islam is somehow automatically entrenched in the governing institutions of
Muslim-majority societies.
Another argument suggests that the idea of elections is foreign to historically Muslim nations, and that democratic structures don’t reflect the current realities of these states.115
Taking a religious approach to this argument, in Islam, the idea of shura (consensus) is often mentioned in relation to democracy as its closest counterpart from within the tradition.
Although this has some criticisms, one doesn’t need to look to Islamic texts to see a possible future for electoral politics in the Middle East. In Europe, a myriad of undemocratic structures existed before electoral politics were adopted. There is no state, no government, and no religion that can be inherently hostile to an idea. Any hostilities come from the people who have the ability to guide these decisions within their respective contexts. There is democracy in the West because people made the decision to pursue it when the conditions were favorable enough to successfully do so.
This doesn’t mean any state or religious group can suddenly decide to do anything; these things often have historical trajectories where the next step makes relative sense within its context. Understanding this, the case for democracy in Muslim majority states looks even
113 Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive? 114 Fish. 115 Lewis, “Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East.”
50 better. Because of the recent string of unfortunate governing structures, from imperialism to authoritarianism, many people in countries with Muslim majorities just want a system they feel is fair and just and will respect and listen to them.116 These people are largely turning to democracy for answers and fulfillment.
This emerging interest in democratic structures is hopeful. The issue for many
Westerners is that this call for democracy is often packaged with some sort of desire for sharia to be enshrined in the new legal codes of the state, something that immediately sounds undemocratic. It understandably places doubt and mistrust in the minds of westerners looking in; they fear that what results of this won’t be founded in the principles of democracy and will promote discriminatory practices.117 Though much has changed in the past few decades, Lewis was grappling with the emergence of this issue in 1993 when he asked: “Is it possible for the
Islamic peoples to evolve a form of government that will be compatible with their own historical, cultural, and religious traditions and yet will bring individual freedom and human rights to the governed as these terms are understood in the free societies of the West?”118
Although Lewis remains pessimistic and doubts the ability of Islamic societies to establish democracies due to their political and economic difficulties, he does concede that there hasn’t been a time where it has been more likely than now.119 It’s important to note that at his time of writing, the 2011 Arab uprisings had yet to occur. Although these events have undoubtedly brought more turmoil to Muslim-majority countries than stability, they reveal the
116 Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics. 117 Kendhammer. 118 Bernard Lewis, “Islam and Liberal Democracy,” The Atlantic, February 1993, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/02/islam-and-liberal-democracy/308509/. 119 Lewis.
51 underlying tensions between authoritarian governments and their citizens and display the capability of individuals to exercise their political agency in a way that they hadn’t been able to under imperialism.
A major barrier remains: what would democracy look like in Muslim-majority countries?
How could people want both sharia and democracy? Aslan suggests that “it is pluralism, not secularism, that defines democracy.”120 Democracy is about using the will of the people to create a just, fair society that they wish to live under. If the people desire sharia, they will advocate for it and vote for policies that support these views. A 2012 poll in Egypt shows that
“while 66 percent of Egyptians favored using sharia as the basis of Egyptian law, a mere 17 percent favored a “literal” application. The rest favored the ‘spirit’ of sharia adapted to contemporary circumstances.”121 This provides evidence that Islam isn’t bound to its founding ideology as many narratives suggest and has the potential to be transformed as adherents reconcile their religious values with changing contexts in the contemporary era.
There may still be some doubts about entrenched religious values in democratic states, however it would be foolish to believe that Islamic societies would be the first to do it.
Although the United States has been founded on the commitment to religious tolerance,
American society is undoubtedly strongly influenced by Christian values by virtue of being a
Christian majority country. 46% of Americans want the Bible to be used as a source of legislation, and 9% want it as the only source.122 Members of the government openly discuss
120 Reza Aslan, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam (Ember, 2012). 121 Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics. 122 John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think (Gallup Press, 2007).
52 their Christian values and faith, and their moral characteristics and worldview have been irreversibly established by their Christian context.123 To expect individual religious beliefs to not influence political values and choices would be absurd; it would be like expecting someone’s identity as an immigrant to not affect their beliefs on immigration policy. Although religion is not exceptional as an identity, all of an individual’s identities heavily inform their experiences and help determine political viewpoints.
It's only natural that some people feel this desire to extend their religious beliefs into their public lives. “According to Tocqueville, men have an innate desire for both religion and freedom, and religious belief serves as an essential safeguard of human freedom.”124 The ethical beliefs of people, often drawn from a religiocultural understanding of morality, help establish predictable and generally acceptable parameters of acceptable behavior. Democracy aims to provide a concrete set of rules and expectations based on popular opinions and ideas about what constitutes a just society. Therefore, a predominantly Muslim society would create a democracy centered around what they believe to be just and fair. That might include laws derived from the ‘spirit of sharia,’ and there’s nothing wrong with that. “A democratic state can be established upon any normative moral framework as long as pluralism remains the source of its legitimacy.”125 Even if there are some concerns of preserving the voices of minorities in these communities, this is a concern in many other democracies and is not unique to Muslim-majority states.
123 John R. Hinnells, The Routledge Companion to The Study of Religion (Routledge, 2005). 124 Richard Fafara, “Are Islam and Democracy Compatible?,” New Oxford Review 85, no. 4 (May 2018): 28–32. 125 Aslan, No God but God.
53
How Islamic Exceptionalism Relates to Salafi-Jihadism
This thesis has established not only that Islam is not exceptional, but that it is also compatible with democracy in a theoretical sense. I can find no evidence of something inherent in either democracy or Islam that prevents states from reconciling the two. If Islam is what
Muslims do, and it makes sense for Muslims that democracy is a viable and even in many cases a desirable outcome, then that avenue is open to them.126 If Muslims believe it can work, then it can.
But what determines whether someone is a Muslim in the context of a global debate on
Islam? As scholars, we are not the arbiters of faith. At the same time, we are studying matters of great importance with global implications, so it is only natural that certain decisions must be made on categorization in order to proceed with the analyses. In Chapter One, I examined the debate famously ascribed to Woods and Hassan about the Islamic State and whether or not they are really Islamic. Hinnells asks “if a religious movement calls itself ‘Christian’ should it not be treated as part of Christianity—or one of the Christianities?”127 Similarly, if a movement calls itself Islamic, should it be considered Islamic? Although it is important to note that the religious dimension is one of many, it is something that must be addressed when interacting with Salafi-
Jihadi groups.
Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism is premised on the idea of Islamic exceptionalism, which itself is rooted in the notion that religion is a special identity, unlike any other identity. One cannot make a strong argument for Islamic exceptionalism without treating religion as a special
126 Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics. 127 Hinnells, The Routledge Companion to The Study of Religion.
54 category. In the first chapter, I established that there isn’t much of a difference between religious extremism and other types of extremism.128 Of course, the context of each individual movement determines what it is and is not able to accomplish, but at their base, they all share the same framework for recruitment and operation.
This suggests that religion is not a particularly special identity category. Additionally, the argument for Islamic exceptionalism makes assumptions about the source of religious knowledge and the experiences of religious people that aren’t necessarily eternal truths. This argument robs Muslims of religious agency and presents Islam as a religion bound to its founding ideology with little room for growth or interpretation, especially with regards to governance and the place of Muslim-majority states within the modern world system.
Additionally, there is the tendency of people to generally accept stated claims about beliefs. Alex Thurston points out that when scholarship defines Salafism, it’s through the use of broad categorizations based on what Salafis tell us, without delving deeper into the context of these beliefs and how they came to be adopted by a group or groups.129 The textbook definition of Salafism always includes something about trying to return to the roots of Islam, but these beliefs are also shared in texts of Islamic sects who are denounced by many modern
Salafis.130 Desires to imitate the Prophet Muhammad are shared in varying ways by many
Muslims, and their commitment to it is not exceptional within Islam at all. The fact that scholars
128 Berger, Extremism. 129 Alex Thurston, “Recurring Definitional Issues Surrounding Salafism, or Why Analysts Are Too Quick to Equate Salafism with Early Islam,” Sahel Blog (blog), March 13, 2019, https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/13/recurring-definitional-issues-surrounding-salafism-or-why-analysts- are-too-quick-to-equate-salafism-with-early-islam/. 130 Thurston.
55 and policymakers are taking these claims at face-value and labeling them as such demonstrates how deeply entrenched both Islamic and Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism are.
The perception of Islam in Western societies naturally affects the way the rise of Salafi-
Jihadism is generally perceived. If Islam is already seen as being exceptional, then a violent group claiming to be inspired by Islam would, by extension, become a special type of violent extremism. This is furthered by propagating their claim to be seeking the only true form of
Islam. The problem with thinking this way is that it encourages people to treat these groups differently than they would other violent extremists in terms of policy and peacebuilding efforts. Because Islam is perceived as an uncompromising ideology, there is little response to those who commit violence in the name of Islam except annihilation. If policymakers believe that all members of the Islamic State or other groups like it are too involved to have any hopes of choosing a different path, they’re the ones that have made that decision, not IS, and it is going to reflect in the way they interact with these groups.
Conclusion
The idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism is predicated on this belief in Islamic exceptionalism. The debate on whether Islam as a religious tradition exists in a special category of its own still remains unsettled in popular discourse. Common arguments for exceptionalism point to the understanding of the Qur’an as being the direct word of God and the promotion of
Islam as a ‘total system’ as key reasons that Islam is less likely to organically evolve a separation of religious and governing affairs. Even so, these arguments have fallen short. Comprehensive
56 studies of religious communities across the world demonstrate that Islam is not particularly different than other major religions.131 Despite this, the public doesn’t have to reach very far to find the argument for Islamic and Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism. Comments from politicians, including and especially President Trump, present Islamic exceptionalism in the worst possible ways. The public discourse on these issues frame policy choices and inspire legislation with the same entrenched notion of Islamic exceptionalism.
In order to fully examine the effects of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism on CVE policy, it is necessary to conduct a comparative case study. The Islamic State has been chosen as the Salafi-
Jihadi case study due to its current relevance in global affairs and the robust discourse that has arisen around it. The other case study will focus on the Irish Republican Army in Northern
Ireland. This case was selected for two main reasons: the involvement of religious narratives with different applications than in Salafi-Jihadi cases, the willingness of all parties to compromise, and the fact that the whole active phase of the conflict played out before the language of CVE policy was developed to fit the increasing Salafi-Jihadi presence. These case studies will further illuminate how Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism plays a role within CVE policy decisions. The case of Northern Ireland will provide an example of how these counterterror measures were undertaken without regards to the ideological absolutism that is applied to groups like the Islamic State.
Chapter 3 contains the case study on the Islamic State. It begins with a background of the group’s origins and explains its ideology and how it operates. During these sections, its use
131 Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive?
57 of social media as a form of propaganda and a means for recruitment is explored, as it provides a heightened sense of insecurity in the US and Europe due to the fact that it facilitates transnational planning and recruitment. After providing this background, it delves into the current status of US CVE efforts. Domestic CVE efforts are meant to foster a sense of trust and community among citizens and discourage violent extremist association, but institutionalized
Islamic exceptionalism causes these programs to disproportionately target Muslims despite the large and increasing violence of Alt-Right related domestic terror. Meanwhile, the US’s international CVE efforts are centered around military action against groups like IS and further the narrative of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism. The chapter will conclude with an analysis of these tactics.
58
Chapter 3: Case Study: The Islamic State
Defining the Islamic State
The Islamic State (IS) can trace its roots far back to Tawhid wal Jihad, a group created by
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2002. In 2004, the group became Al-Qaeda in Iraq after swearing allegiance to Al-Qaeda. The group garnered support from Iraqi Sunni Muslims in a context of instability and uncertainty; Shia Muslims continued to outnumber them in Iraq, the
Kurdistan Regional Government was founded in 2005 and provided a bit of political agency for
Iraq’s Kurdish population, and the United States still had a military presence in the country.132
Zarqawi addressed their concerns in a way that nobody else seemed to and enjoyed some support by the Sunni population until his death in 2006, when he was killed by US forces.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq rebranded itself to the Islamic State of Iraq after Zarqawi’s death. The group faced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was named leader of the group after it lost some of its top members in 2010, and slowly he began to build the group back up. By 2013, they were conducting a plethora of attacks in Iraq and some of their members expanded into Syria under the name Jabhat Al-Nusra.133 In April of 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that the Islamic
State of Iraq would merge with Jabhat al-Nusra to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham.
132 Christopher M Blanchard and Carla E Humud, “The Islamic State and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service, September 25, 2018, 27. 133 Blanchard and Humud.
59
Jabhat al-Nusra declined the merger, but al-Baghdadi’s group still used the name and captured territory in parts of Syria.
In February of 2014 Al-Qaeda severed their ties with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-
Sham, and the leadership made the claim that they were never a part of al-Qaeda in the first place and always have been their own group. Shortly after this, in June they declared the creation of a caliphate and changed their name to the Islamic State and became a major party to the conflict in Syria.134 They named Raqqa their capital and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi the caliph.
“To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having
’amr, or authority.”135 In justification for this, they claim that al-Baghdadi can trace his lineage back to the Quraysh tribe (the tribe that Muhammad was a member of), which in tandem with his religious knowledge, territorial holdings, and following, gives him the right to hold the position of caliph.136
The caliphate has a complicated history. While the Prophet Muhammad served as both the religious and political leader during his lifetime, the intention was that the caliph (his successor) was only to serve as the political leader of the ummah and oversee the wellbeing, continuity, and expansion of the community.137 Although the caliph was not a religious leader, they were tasked with the administration of the land inhabited by Muslims and upholding
134 BBC News, “After the Caliphate: Has IS Been Defeated?,” February 7, 2019, sec. Middle East, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45547595. 135 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants.” 136 Blanchard and Humud, “The Islamic State and U.S. Policy.” 137 James Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History, Fourth (Oxford University Press, 2015).
60 sharia in these lands.138 This embedded a religious significance to the position that is often perceived by some in the modern era to mean that the caliph has a natural responsibility to hold religious authority. This can be seen both in how popular news media describes the caliph,139 and in a commonly held misconception that Muslims are seeking to create theocratic forms of government.140 The caliphate was officially disbanded as an institution by Kemal
Ataturk on the grounds that it would interfere with the creation of a modern secular state.141
IS’s claim to have formed a caliphate has been rejected by a very large majority of
Muslims, who believe the claim holds absolutely no legitimacy.142 Even within Muslim-majority countries, support for IS is extremely low.143 This isn’t surprising; the brutal tactics of IS are off- putting and frankly vulgar to most people. But the call for a new caliphate is playing on a real desire that many in the Muslim community feel for unity and political autonomy. Salman Sayyid of Leeds University writes: “One way of thinking about the caliphate is really a quest for
Muslims to have autonomy. The idea that you should have capacity to write your own history becomes very strong and for Muslims I think the caliphate is the instrument for trying to write their own history.”144 IS directly calls out the Sykes-Picot Agreement as a major division of the
Muslim world and calls for its reversal.145 Their entire rhetoric leans on a callback to a time
138 James E Sowerwine, “Caliph and Caliphate,” Oxford Bibliographies, December 12, 2009, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0013.xml. 139 Karl Vick, “What Is the Caliphate?,” Time, July 1, 2014, sec. World, http://time.com/2942239/what-is-the- caliphate/. 140 Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive? 141 Vick, “What Is the Caliphate?” 142 Yasmine Hafiz, “What Is A Caliphate? ISIS Declaration Raises Questions,” Huffington Post, June 30, 2014, sec. Religion, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/what-is-a-caliphate-meaning_n_5543538.html. 143 Lipka, “Muslims and Islam.” 144 BBC News, “What’s the Appeal of a Caliphate?,” October 26, 2014, sec. Magazine, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29761018. 145 Hafiz, “What Is A Caliphate?”
61 where the Muslim world was not only autonomous, but held real power and influence in the world. Although the argument about the underlying socioeconomic causes of violent extremism do not fully explain the phenomenon, their use of pre- and post-colonial narratives in the attempt to recruit and spread an extremist agenda suggest that these groups are recognizing a real feeling of disenfranchisement and uncertainty in the communities they are operating in and are trying to use that feeling to fuel their own gains.146 They are trying to provide a religious answer, and though a vast majority feel that what they’re doing is un-Islamic and unnecessarily violent, there are people who are convinced by what they say. Throughout the conflict, an estimated 40,000 people total have travelled from foreign countries to Iraq and Syria to join IS, while in 2018 there was estimated to be between 28,000 and 31,000 total fighters remaining between the two countries.147
In addition to their primary group, many other Salafi-Jihadi groups have pledged allegiance to IS. IS affiliates exist in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Caucuses,
Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and on the Mali-Niger border.148 Although this chapter will focus on the main group operating primarily in Iraq and Syria, it’s important to note the prevalence of
IS ideology among other Salafi-Jihadi groups and recognize that even if many groups oppose their actions (al-Qaeda being the most notable denouncer), they aren’t completely and universally reviled in these circles.
146 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.” 147 BBC News, “After the Caliphate.” 148 Blanchard and Humud, “The Islamic State and U.S. Policy.”
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Ideology of the Islamic State
The Islamic State is an extreme expression of a broader movement within Islam called the Salafi movement. “Salafis believe that by strictly following the rules and guidance in the
Qur’an and Sunna (path or example of the Prophet Muhammad) they eliminate the biases of human subjectivity and self-interest, thereby allowing them to identify the singular truth of
God’s commands.”149 The root word ‘salaf’ means ancestors, referencing the way that Salafists aim to emulate the first few generations of Muslims. Salafi thought allows “only one legitimate religious interpretation [of Islam]” and denounces the others as un-Islamic.150
Wiktorowicz argues that Salafists are not all violent extremists; that there are three major schools of Salafis (purists, politicos, and jihadis) that all hold essentially the same beliefs, but part company when determining what actions to take based on their interpretation of
Islam.151 Purists believe that Islam has no place in the democratic structures of the West due to their corruptive nature. They are nonviolent but isolate themselves from interacting with any type of Western thought or practice. Politicos arose from purist roots but have realized the importance of understanding the political context in order to make informed, Islamic decisions.
Jihadis are politicos who found themselves in the context of armed conflict, and believe they hold an insight to the true state of things that others do not. They perceive the situation
Muslims are facing to be the direst and therefore require the most extreme action.152
149 Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29, no. 3 (August 19, 2006): 207–39. 150 Wiktorowicz. 151 Wiktorowicz. 152 Wiktorowicz.
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This assessment is not without criticism. “Although Salafis do share a basic set of beliefs, several scholars have shown that they nevertheless differ on a number of creedal issues, among which the correct definition of faith (iman) and unbelief (kufr) and the question of when to label a Muslim an unbeliever (takfir) figure as perhaps the most prominent.”153 There are many criticisms to his categorization structure as well (and many alternatives have been proposed,) but there are two important takeaways from his work. The first is that Salafism is not primarily defined by action, but as an ideology, and can motivate people in different ways.154 The second is that the thing that sets these groups most apart isn’t what they believe, it’s what they decide is right and appropriate to do about those beliefs.155
Wagemakers provides a redefinition of the above categories as well as emphasizes that the boundaries between them are thin and often crossed, but for these purposes, the way he understands Salafi-Jihadists will be the focus. “[Salafi-Jihadists can] be defined as those Salafis who believe in solving intra-Muslim problems of supposed apostasy of rulers and allegedly un-
Islamic legislation through revolutionary (and often global) jihad.”156 This is a key component of the way IS understands itself. Unlike other Salafi-Jihadi groups, IS ventured into territory no other group had yet to go in June of 2014 when they declared the reestablishment of the caliphate.
153 Joas Wagemakers, “Revisiting Wiktorowicz: Categorising and Defining the Branches of Salafism,” in Salafism After the Arab Awakening (Oxford University Press, 2017), 7–24. 154 Wagemakers. 155 Wagemakers. 156 Wagemakers.
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Although others like Bin Laden had the idea of laying the foundation for an eventual caliphate, they all knew that it was something that they would never live to see themselves.157
IS’s declaration puts them in a different position than other Salafi-Jihadi groups. At its height in
2014-2015, IS controlled around 34,000 square miles of territory and were responsible for the governance of 8 million people.158 For those that fell under their rule, they imposed harshly literal interpretations of sharia in a way that groups like Al-Qaeda never could, and in fact, never wanted to.159 They imposed slavery on infidels but allowed those who were eligible to instead pay jizya, a special tax imposed on Christians and Jews living in Muslim lands, which has a historical precedent. They also carried out public executions, even posting videos of them online. IS has a very specific, blaringly literal reading of Islam that has caused the group to go about its goals in a different way than Salafi-Jihadists of the past.
One major point of contention between IS and other Salafi-Jihadi groups can be seen in
IS’s sweeping pronouncements of takfir. To do so is to make an accusation that an individual has fallen out of the Islamic faith and is an apostate. In the past, people were cautious about accusing anyone of takfir, because “if the accuser is wrong, he himself has committed apostasy by making a false accusation.”160 Salafist movements of the past have adhered to this, but the
Islamic State has taken liberties in declaring entire populations of people takfiri instead of just denouncing them as sinners.161 It’s a bold move that helps the Islamic State assert a perceived religious authority by identifying themselves as the voice of Islam. They see themselves as the
157 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants.” 158 BBC News, “After the Caliphate.” 159 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants.” 160 Wood. 161 Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea.
65 one true sect of Islam and believe that those who do not share their interpretation are not true
Muslims.
Establishment of a caliphate is an important responsibility that IS believes has been cast aside and forgotten for too long.162 During his address in 2014, Baghdadi claimed that it was the duty of Muslims to observe tawhid (the absolute oneness of God) and to worship God, and that creating a caliphate was essential to properly executing this.163 People who believe this have expressed that upon the creation of a caliphate, it is the duty of Muslims to migrate there and live within its boundaries and laws.164 Baghdadi’s call for citizens hasn’t placed a sole focus on the migration of fighters but expands to express a desire for women to emigrate as well. There are systems in place that act as matchmakers that will set women up with jihadists fighting in IS territory, sometimes including a sort of online dating that would ideally end in migration and marriage.165 “Through its appeals to both genders, the Islamic State hopes to build a complete society.”166 IS propaganda remains an interesting juxtaposition between graphically displayed violence and claims of a socioeconomic and/or religious paradise.
People are drawn to IS for many different reasons and play different roles in the organization. The most important factor to consider when assessing motivations for participation in violent extremism is the difference between the ideological backgrounds of the leaders and low-level members and how their beliefs and experiences interact with their understandings of their role in the organization. “Radicalized individuals do not necessarily
162 Maher. 163 Maher. 164 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants.” 165 Abdel Bari Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate (University of California Press, 2015). 166 Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants.”
66 engage with an extremist ideology in a sophisticated manner.”167 Oftentimes the leaders of organizations like IS have college degrees and could meaningfully engage in ideological debates with orthodox followers,168 while adherents to extreme interpretations “pick and choose the elements that are meaningful to them” and usually don’t understand the full set of worldviews being presented.169 Because of this, one does not need to be extremely educated to join; they need only feel motivated to act in ways congruent with the group’s methodology to accomplish group goals.
Organizational Structure of the Islamic State
One researcher, posing as a potential recruit for IS travelling from the UK, easily got in touch with someone online who spoke with him on third-party messaging apps and said they could help him arrange to get to Syria and join.170 The process starts with a flight to Turkey, then there are safehouses in Turkey along the Syrian border where members give directions on what to do for the new recruits once they’ve crossed the border.171 After expressing concerns about money, the IS member said they could set up a meeting for him with people already in the UK that can provide him with the funds to emigrate, at which point he cut off communication for safety reasons.
167 Berger, Extremism. 168 Almond, Appleby, and Sivan, Strong Religion. 169 Berger, Extremism. 170 Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate. 171 Atwan.
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This example provided in Atwan’s book demonstrates the beginning of a new type of recruitment strategy, one that provides a lower risk for both recruiters and those interested in joining violent movements. It allows people on both ends to remain anonymous until they build trust and does not require that a potential recruit set up a risky physical meeting with potentially dangerous people.172 IS’s use of the internet and social media for recruiting and propaganda-spreading is only the beginning of this phenomenon, which will likely continue to grow as more groups adopt it.
Even though these groups have new technology at their disposal, their basic structure as an organization remains the same. As I established in chapter one, the basic structure of all violent extremist groups defines who is in the group and who eligible to join the group against a concept of the ‘other’; people who are not ever able to join the group and are essentially the enemy of the group.173 The group narrative claims that the existence of the out group is a natural and existential threat to the in group that cannot be mitigated, and instead the only possible solution to assure their safety is destruction of the out-group.174
The nature of these specific narratives that vary by group are crucial for the understanding of recruitment strategies and understanding how the group posits itself within its context. In the case of IS, the backdrop to their existence in Syria and Iraq and their appeal to Muslims far outside their general area of operations have many components. The ideology of the Islamic State serves as a strong motivator for those who are not morally objected to their
172 Berger, Extremism. 173 Berger. 174 Berger.
68 actions as they understand them. As Berger discusses, there is a process through which every individual who joins groups like these undergo as they evaluate and re-evaluate their choice at many points throughout their involvement to assess whether or not they are doing what they believe is right for them.175 There are no extremists, just people who ‘do extremism.’ If the focus is shifted to think about people involved in violent extremist groups in these terms, a more accurate and helpful assessment of the situation can be achieved.
IS then is essentially an “ordinary [organization] operating at a tremendous disadvantage.”176 They face the same types of agency problems that other organizations face, but because they have to operate in a covert manner to accomplish their illegal and often violent goals, they face an additional set of problems that regular organizations can handle much more easily. Because of this, the violent extremist groups that cope well with these agency problems tend to more strongly resist CVE measures.177
Most of these potential problems stem from the ability of members and leaders to communicate with each other. Communication is risky because it can link individual operatives to leaders, but some degree of communication is necessary to operate fully and coherently.
Minimal communication gives grunt-level agents the need to make choices that they might not understand the full consequences of, as well as puts the leaders who are planning the group’s efforts at a disadvantage due to a lack of knowledge and feedback from their ground
175 Berger. 176 Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma. 177 Shapiro.
69 operatives.178 This makes it harder to correct possible problems and/or punish people who are acting outside of the group’s interest.
Despite these issues, violent extremist organizations can benefit from some of the same techniques for recruitment that regular organizations use. IS was the first major violent extremist group to recognize the critical role of social media and put a serious emphasis on its use as an invaluable tool for recruitment and information spreading.179 They have made use of the internet in unprecedented ways and their online presence is an essential cornerstone of who they are as an organization. “Current evidence suggests that social media leads a majority of people toward centrism and inclusivity but empowers and accelerates polarization and extremism for a significant minority.”180 The extreme rhetoric of IS already insures that only a select few who are already inclined to agree with them in some way will consider joining, and social media only makes it easier for these people to make connections that would allow them to do so.
The transnational outreach made capable through utilization of social media and forums inspires fear and concern in many Western governments. If these messages are affecting people regardless of geographical location, if anyone can start engaging with these types of ideas and people, where does the threat end? What is there to do to address the possibility that residents of the US can be persuaded to engage in this violent extremist behavior? These questions raise a whole other issue that CVE policy has been crafted specifically to include: how
178 Shapiro. 179 Berger, Extremism. 180 Berger.
70 can policymakers adapt to the greater capability of information sharing and communication to promote nonviolence domestically as well as abroad?
US Domestic CVE Policy
In February of 2015, President Obama organized the White House Summit on
Countering Violent Extremism. The summit hosted leaders from around the word and was meant to be in some ways a precursor to the UN’s plan to prevent violent extremism, which was to be drafted and adopted at the UN General Assembly at the end of that year.181 During the summit, there were three basic conversations happening simultaneously; multifaith efforts in the US, global discussion of strategies, and CVE policies aimed at US residents.182
The first discussion on multifaith efforts was at its core about building trust between minority religious and their communities. Coming out of this summit, the idea is that “the
Federal Government’s most effective role in strengthening community partnerships and preventing violent extremism is as a facilitator, convener, and source of research and findings.”183 The US government believes that these community-building efforts are best done at the local level and organized by non-governmental organizations with help from government
181 Ban-Ki Moon, “Remarks at Leaders’ Summit Countering Violent Extremism,” United Nations Secretary-General, September 29, 2015, https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2015-09-29/remarks-leaders-summit- countering-violent-extremism. 182 Meryl Chertoff, “Notes from the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,” The Hill, February 26, 2015, https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/233831-notes-from-the-white-house-summit- on-countering-violent. 183 Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,” whitehouse.gov, February 18, 2015, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/18/fact- sheet-white-house-summit-countering-violent-extremism.
71 funding. The summit expressed the intention to appropriate fifteen million dollars in the 2016
Budget “for the Department of Justice to support community-led efforts to build resilience and counter violent extremism,”184 which they received.185
The second discussion, which addressed violent extremism globally, included members of African and European states that had differing connections to this phenomenon. Intrafaith dialogue was suggested as an important tool, with the implication that the moderate religious leaders might impact those who lean more radical and help lay the grounds for a peaceful and pluralistic community.186 They encouraged leaders of faith communities to develop their own tools to counter violent extremist ideology in their regions and disrupt the flow of people travelling to join violent extremist groups.
The third discussion was about CVE measures within the United States, with a specific focus on countering the ideology of the Islamic State.187 There are pilot programs in three cities—Boston, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles—whose goals are to “foster partnerships between local government, law enforcement, mayor’s offices, the private sector, local service providers, academia, and many others who can help prevent violent extremism” in order to come up with local programs that can target susceptible populations of people and expose them to programming that helps reduce the risk of radicalization.188 There is a hope that once these programs develop, their framework can be adapted to other areas.
184 Office of the Press Secretary. 185 “Fiscal Year 2016 Budget of the U.S. Government” (Office of Management and Budget, 2016), budget.gov. 186 Chertoff, “Notes from the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.” 187 Chertoff; Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.” 188 Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.”
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All three of these conversations demonstrate the presence of Islamic exceptionalism in the mainstream approaches to CVE. “White House officials are downplaying calls to focus on
Islamist terrorism…insisting that recent attacks should not lead to stereotyping of certain communities as higher risk.”189 But then-Vice President Joe Biden opened the summit by welcoming the delegations from the aforementioned three cities by highlighting their past achievements in CVE work within their jurisdiction with explicit references to each city’s Muslim community.190 He talked about the Minneapolis police department training 600 officers in
Somali language and culture in part of their efforts to connect with the large Somalian Muslim population that lives there.191 Biden also highlights the presence of the head of the Muslim
Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles and highlights his CVE program as a great achievement.192
With Boston, he discusses how they are working to provide “platforms for community leaders in every community: the Muslim community, other minority communities, for people to be able to advocate for nonviolence.”193 Including these concerns in the opening remarks of a summit of this type is not surprising, nor is it completely unhelpful; the problem lies in the fact that
Muslims are the focus of these remarks and seem to be the reason each of the three big CVE pilot program cities were chosen.
When the summit was first announced the Interfaith Alliance expressed its concerns about the Press Secretary’s statement, which “mentions only acts of violence perpetrated by
189 Dan Roberts, “White House Resists Calls to Focus on Islamist Terrorism at Three-Day Extremism Summit,” The Guardian, February 17, 2015, sec. US news, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/17/white-house- islamic-terror-extremism-summit. 190 C-Span, “Vice President Joe Biden Remarks Extremism Terrorism,” February 17, 2015, https://www.c- span.org/video/?324394-2/vice-president-joe-biden-remarks-extremism-terrorism. 191 C-Span. 192 C-Span. 193 C-Span.
73 individuals who self-identify as Muslims, and it holds up as examples of prevention only CVE pilot programs directed at American Muslims.”194 The executive director of Muslim Advocates told press in an interview that she disagreed with the summit because “they seem to focus primarily on Muslim communities, which account for only a small fraction of terrorist activities carried out in the United States.”195 From the original inception of CVE programs in the United
States in 2010, there has always in practice been a disproportionate focus on Muslims,196 even though “between 2001 and 2015, more Americans were killed by homegrown right-wing extremists than by Islamist terrorists”197 (71% and 26% respectively).198 Institutionalized Islamic exceptionalism has led domestic CVE efforts to ignore the real and demonstrated threat of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in favor of targeting Muslims and branding them a potential threat.
Analysis of US Domestic CVE Policy
Constructing CVE policies aimed at preventing domestic radicalization has been a particular challenge for the US. It’s hard to tell who is at risk of becoming violent, which has led many CVE efforts to be disproportionately focused on Muslims due to the looming fear of
194 Juliet Eilperin, “Trying to Counter Extremism at Home, U.S. Faces a Risk: Sowing More Mistrust,” Washington Post, February 16, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trying-to-counter-extremism-at-home-us- faces-a-risk-sowing-more-mistrust/2015/02/16/43f742d8-b58b-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html. 195 Eilperin. 196 Spencer Ackerman, “Anti-Terrorism Summit Reinforces ‘fear and Hate’ towards Muslims, Critics Warn,” The Guardian, February 13, 2015, sec. US news, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/13/muslim-anti- terrorism-summit-white-house-critics. 197 Jennifer Williams, “White American Men Are a Bigger Domestic Terrorist Threat than Muslim Foreigners,” Vox, October 2, 2017, https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/2/16396612/las-vegas-mass-shooting-terrorism-islam. 198 Yonat Shimron Religion News Service, “More Americans Killed by White Supremecists than Muslim Extremists, Studies Show,” The Oakland Press, February 2, 2018, https://www.theoaklandpress.com/lifestyles/more- americans-killed-by-white-supremecists-than-muslim-extremists-studies/article_58ce7b0b-30bf-5a5a-a023- 70ee4f8710c6.html.
74 threats from groups like al-Qaeda and IS.199 Any one person’s reason for participating in violent extremism comes from a “complex relationship between structural factors and individual experiences.”200 One of the reasons it’s so hard to create meaningful CVE programs is because policymakers don’t know exactly what motivates or dissuades participation. Additionally, the results of any CVE efforts are complicated to accurately track, so it’s hard to know if a given policy or program is helpful or not.
As the influence of IS and its ideology spread across the internet, so too did the US’s efforts to counter it. One program that utilizes what’s called the “redirect method” aims to use keywords in search terms to identify people who are potential recruits for IS and display advertisements for videos that debunk popular IS recruitment tactics and messages.201 All that can be reliably measured through this method however is engagement; which they report averages about what any other ad would. There was an analysis done on the comments of one of these videos, equaling about 281 at the time. One common theme they found was suspicion due to the Western source of the campaign’s funding and a lack of meaningful connection to the video; many who chose to comment found it preachy and unappealing.202 This suggests that, unsurprisingly, government employees might be misunderstanding their intended audience and making wrong assumptions about what kind of message might dissuade them from violence. There is a theory that the ad’s presence may itself help shatter what is usually an
199 Brian A. Jackson et al., “Practical Terrorism Prevention,” Product Page, 2019, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2647z2.html. 200 Kim Cragin et al., “What Factors Cause Youth to Reject Violent Extremism?,” Product Page, 2015, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1118.html. 201 Todd C. Helmus and Kurt Klein, “Assessing Outcomes of Online Campaigns Countering Violent Extremism,” Product Page, 2018, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2813.html. 202 Helmus and Klein.
75 ideologically uninterrupted journey towards radicalization, but there isn’t enough data available to assess that claim or how much of a difference an interruption would make.
Both engaging in and rejecting violent extremism is a multi-step process.203 One other
CVE method that the US has employed in the past has been the encouragement of people to refer friends and family members who they suspect of engaging with violent extremist ideology to law enforcement for potential intervention.204 But the lack of intervention capacity perpetuates the idea that any referrals will lead to jail and not help, one concern that prevents reporting.205 Efforts in Minnesota’s Somalian community to place people not involved with law enforcement into community centers as an option for people to turn to isn’t much help either; people see it as imposing surveillance and are uncomfortable with the fact that Muslim communities remain the main targets of these types of programs despite the growing number of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the United States.206 Coupled with the fact that law enforcement has already been caught illegally surveilling Muslim communities,207 I would venture to say that trust between law enforcement and Muslim Americans is low on both sides.
The quasi existential concern of IS has caused the US to make preventing domestic
‘Islamic’ terrorism the main focus of CVE efforts within the country and strengthened the belief in Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism. The hyperfocus of CVE policy on Muslims creates a multitude of problems. It sows distrust of the government in American Muslim communities and contributes
203 Cragin et al., “What Factors Cause Youth to Reject Violent Extremism?”; Berger, Extremism. 204 Jackson et al., “Practical Terrorism Prevention.” 205 Jackson et al. 206 Eilperin, “Trying to Counter Extremism at Home, U.S. Faces a Risk: Sowing More Mistrust.” 207 Ed Pilkington and agencies, “NYPD Settles Lawsuit after Illegally Spying on Muslims,” The Guardian, April 5, 2018, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/nypd-muslim-surveillance-settlement.
76 to the public fear of Muslims and Islam. It sets aside the more dangerous threat of extremists like those in the Alt-Right movement, who have larger and more active institutions within the
United States and have maintained many publications advocating for white nationalism since
2008.208 The fear inspired by IS has led to things like Trump’s travel ban, which has affected the lives of real people that have nothing to do with violent extremism while promoting the idea that Muslim immigrants are dangerous despite the fact that “none of the perpetrators of the major US terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam in the past 15 years have come from the nations on Trump’s travel ban.”209 Islamic exceptionalism helps promote these Islamophobic fears by identifying all Muslims as potential threats because if their religious views are uncompromisable then they are all susceptible to Salafi-Jihadi propaganda in the same way.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the complex realities of violent extremism.
Domestic CVE programs only account for 4% of the US counterterrorism budget per year.210 As discussed above, the US prioritizes the protection of their homeland from violent extremists over other goals. Through their funding allocation, it’s clear that these domestic CVE efforts aren’t seen as particularly valuable in the context of CVE efforts internationally. The possibility of Americans radicalizing and committing violence seems not to be as much of a scare to the US as the possibility of noncitizens coming to carry out attacks in the country. This also comes as a result of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism, which causes people to perceive Salafi-
Jihadi violent extremism as somehow being more dangerous than other forms. Despite the
208 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Alt-Right,” Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d., https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right. 209 Williams, “White American Men Are a Bigger Domestic Terrorist Threat than Muslim Foreigners.” 210 “Fiscal Year 2016 Budget of the U.S. Government”; Eilperin, “Trying to Counter Extremism at Home, U.S. Faces a Risk: Sowing More Mistrust.”
77 growing presence of the Alt-Right movement and the violence that white supremacists in the
US have caused, the comparatively small amount of the CVE budget that goes to domestic CVE programs still target programming in Muslim communities. America still considers Salafi-
Jihadists to be a greater threat to their security, so has focused the CVE budget specifically on reducing the possibility of this threat. Because of this, a vast majority of this budget goes to the operations that US carries out in places like Syria and Iraq and not to domestic activities.
It is abundantly clear that domestically, the United States focuses most of its CVE efforts on the Muslim population, something that has become further stressed through both the rise of IS and the Trump presidency. CVE programs however only constitute 4% of the US counterterrorism budget. The way that the US handles CVE efforts in the context of militarized conflicts like those in Iraq and Syria are very different than the way they are handled domestically. Although the US focuses on counternarratives and empowerment domestically, their efforts to combat these groups internationally are almost exclusively military in nature.
This tendency towards military action has grown stronger with time as the idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism has diffused into mainstream political society and helped structure the way they conduct CVE work.
US Foreign CVE Policy Response to the Islamic State
Before IS existed as it is known today, and before even the 9/11 attack in 2001, there was a shift in attitudes towards violent extremism at the legislative level that contributed to the production of contemporary notions of how to conduct CVE efforts. The Antiterrorism and
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Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 “changed the framework of US policy from combatting terrorist tactics to punishing designated terrorist groups.”211 The 9/11 attack was the catalyst that ignited the spirit of this new attitude, changing the issue of violent extremist groups from one of law enforcement to that of war.212 This attack happened in the context of a growing threat from groups like al-Qaeda, and what could have been perceived as a single tragedy escalated to an existential threat whose legacy continues on even today through the rhetoric of people like President Trump. The scar that this event left in the American psyche and the precedent set by the aforementioned Act allowed the United States to easily slip into the ‘War on Terror’ mentality where the focus became set on the destruction of violent extremist groups.213
This shift away from traditional methods of counterterrorism and towards what would soon become the base for CVE policy was a direct product of the rise of Salafi-Jihadi groups. As the notion of Islamic exceptionalism gained traction, US political actors decided that because these groups were different, they needed a different approach for engaging with them. Early
CVE melded an understanding of ideological motivation with direct military action. Today, the effects of poverty on the persistence of violent extremism is starting to become an area of exploration. Even so, military action remains the key component of most CVE policy.
Since the original Authorization of Military Force against al-Qaeda and associated violent extremist groups was issued in 2001, there has not been another version passed that
211 Jenkins, “Bush, Obama, And Trump: The Evolution Of U.S. Counterterrorist Policy Since 9/11.” 212 Jenkins. 213 Jenkins.
79 has been updated to reflect the changing circumstances, particularly the complications that IS and the Syrian civil war have brought to the table.214 The rise of IS has necessitated revisiting the way CVE efforts are constructed, as the organization often makes strong religious claims in a time period where Islamic exceptionalism has become an influential force in Western politics and policymaking.
Sustaining coherent CVE efforts through three presidents comes with its own set of challenges, and what he have largely seen since the original authorization is a focus on military efforts and the targeted killing of leadership of these groups,215 and although poverty and experiences of sociopolitical uncertainty have become part of the attempt to understand the causes of violent extremism,216 they haven’t been addressed in CVE efforts anywhere near the degree of CVE-focused military action. In the sustenance of this military campaign, the concerns of Sunni Muslims in Syria and Iraq have been pushed aside despite the possibly severe consequences of letting these concerns go unnoticed.217 The focus on military efforts has greatly decreased the amount of territory that IS once held at the time of writing in early 2019, but US military officials claim that “if [military] pressure on the group is not sustained, IS could likely resurge in Syria within six to 12 months and regain limited territory in the Middle
Euphrates River Valley."218
214 Christopher S. Chivvis and Andrew Liepman, “Authorities for Military Operations Against Terrorist Groups,” 2016, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1145-1.html. 215 Jenkins, “Bush, Obama, And Trump: The Evolution Of U.S. Counterterrorist Policy Since 9/11”; Lynn E. Davis, Jeffrey Martini, and Kim Cragin, “A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat,” RAND Corporation, January 31, 2017, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE228.html. 216 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.” 217 Davis, Martini, and Cragin, “A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat.” 218 BBC News, “After the Caliphate.”
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In spite of this, President Trump announced in December of 2018 that the United States was going to withdraw its remaining 2,000 troops from Syria.219 This move has been widely criticized and has many concerned. Despite the recent commencement of the final push to reclaim the remainder of IS’s territory, the conflict in Syria appears far from over; IS’s role in what began as a civil war is only one part of the crisis. Turkey has continually expressed concerns over the growing strength and influence of the Kurdish military forces in Syria and considers them a major threat due to the presence of militant Kurds in Turkey along the border.
Although policy suggestions have acknowledged the potential disaster that could come out of empowering the Kurds,220 the concern has been largely set aside as the US has worked very closely with the Kurdish militia in the fight against IS. At the time of writing, the Kurds control a large portion of northeast Syria, and Turkey has expressed a desire in clearing them out of the area when the US troops leave.221
Even if the situation with the Kurds somehow does not escalate the conflict further, the loss of territory does not equal the defeat of IS. According to the UN Secretary General, “in Iraq, where the government declared victory [over IS] in December 2017, [IS] has already substantially evolved into a covert network.” “The IS network in Syria is expected to evolve to resemble that in Iraq” after the pending declaration of victory that President Trump has stated the intent of announcing soon.222 Despite their recent territorial losses, IS still maintains sizable
219 Rebecca Morin, “Trump Set to Announce ‘100 Percent’ of ISIS Caliphate Liberated,” Politico, February 6, 2019, https://politi.co/2Sq8OTh. 220 Davis, Martini, and Cragin, “A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat.” 221 Al-Jazeera, “Russia: Turkey Needs Syria’s Consent before Setting up Safe Zone,” Al-Jazeera, February 14, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/russia-turkey-syria-consent-setting-safe-zone-190214113021815.html. 222 Morin, “Trump Set to Announce ‘100 Percent’ of ISIS Caliphate Liberated.”
81 affiliate groups and members outside of Syria and Iraq.223 Though the recent victories are inspiring optimism, the situation is still extremely fragile. This suggests, predictably, that military action can only result in a temporary decrease in violence as it only addresses the symptoms of violent extremist action, and not their cause.
To add to the potential resurgence of IS, throughout this conflict the US has amassed around 800 IS prisoners of war who are citizens of European countries. In a tweet on February
16, 2019 President Trump claimed that these countries needed to take their people back home and put them on trial, or else the US will be forced to release them.224 These countries do not want to be welcoming violent extremists back into their borders and into their prisons, where they fear that these individuals will try to radicalize others.225 There is also concern of other foreign IS fighters returning to their home countries to carry out attacks and/or recruit.226 This demonstrates at least some degree of understanding that military action is not a long-term solution and that members of these groups may continue their actions even after IS holds no territory, but it also shows us that Salafi-Jihadist violence is perceived as an issue of identity and not action; that even if circumstances changed, these people would still favor violence. It has become radical to think of these individuals as being able to re-integrate into normal society,
223 Blanchard and Humud, “The Islamic State and U.S. Policy”; Morin, “Trump Set to Announce ‘100 Percent’ of ISIS Caliphate Liberated.” 224 Al-Jazeera, “Donald Trump Demands Europe Take Hundreds of ISIL Fighters,” A-Jazeera, February 17, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/trump-demands-europe-hundreds-isil-prisoners- 190217051030452.html. 225 Al-Jazeera. 226 Brian Michael Jenkins, “The Dynamics of the Conflicts in Syria and Iraq and the Threat Posed by Homegrown Terrorists and Returning Western Fighters,” RAND Corporation, 2015, https://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT443.html.
82 even though there are past examples of doing so successfully in other cases of violent extremism.227
Throughout the US’s interactions with IS, one thing has been clear: the security of the homeland of the United States is the US’s first priority.228 The way that the US has been advancing their cause against IS so far has been primarily through military action and leaving development and restructuring assistance aside.229 As has been stressed by many parties, the underlying causes of violent extremism such as poverty and lack of political participation are certainly not the singular reason for the rise of violent extremism in a particular area, but if these things are ignored in favor of a military-based approach, there is a high risk of those same violent organizations retaining and/or regaining a following and continuing to carry out the same operations as before the military campaign. That has already been a stated concern in the case of IS in Syria once American troops leave.230
Analysis of US Foreign CVE Policy Towards the Islamic State
As this chapter has established, the US foreign policy response to IS has taken on an entirely militaristic dynamic. This tendency can be attributed in part to the popular views of
Islamic exceptionalism held by many American government officials and citizens that
227 Colm Campbell and Ita Connolly, “Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland,” The Modern Law Review 69, no. 6 (November 2006): 935–57. 228 Davis, Martini, and Cragin, “A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat.” 229 Bob Corker et al., “The Spread of ISIS and Transnational Terrorism,” § Committee On Foreign Relations (2016); Jenkins, “Bush, Obama, And Trump: The Evolution Of U.S. Counterterrorist Policy Since 9/11”; Blanchard and Humud, “The Islamic State and U.S. Policy”; Davis, Martini, and Cragin, “A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat.” 230 Morin, “Trump Set to Announce ‘100 Percent’ of ISIS Caliphate Liberated.”
83 perpetuates the idea that Islamic beliefs and practices can invoke a need for violence in some and the best way to understand that violence is primarily through the lens of Islam. The idea that Islam as a religion is naturally different from other religious identities in both text and practice suggests that violent extremism inspired by Islam is unable to be mitigated. Only dealing with IS through military means makes the statement that the US either believes that it absolutely is not possible for any sort of agreement to be reached with IS, or that IS is not worth diplomatic efforts. The US widely views Islamic beliefs as rigid and inflexible, and because there’s a popular belief that religion is the primary motivator behind IS action, they perceive members of the group as homogenous and joined under the same cause for similar or the same reasons.
This focus on militarily handling IS has put the US in a situation where they have had to plan more short-term than is ideal. Through their work in the Syrian conflict, the US has empowered the Kurdish militias in Syria and although they have been instrumental in territorial gains against IS, their strengthening also brings global concerns about the security of the region.
Turkey has already made it clear that the Kurdish fighters in Syria are a big problem for them, and they intend on trying to clear the northeast of them once the US withdraws its troops there.231 The Kurds are an ethnic group whose historical homeland was split between four states as part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Treaty of Sevres, and over the past few decades Kurdish populations in each state has advocated for political rights and the right to autonomy and self-government. Turkey is worried that if the Kurds in Syria are empowered,
231 Al-Jazeera, “Russia: Turkey Needs Syria’s Consent before Setting up Safe Zone.”
84 they serve as a threat to Turkey and have the potential to increase the influence of the PKK in
Turkey. The US’s focus on destruction of IS may serve to create more problems in the long run for regional stability if they continue to empower the Kurds, a concern shared by the Rand
Corporation, who suggested that they should take caution and avoid making these matters worse as they proceed.232 In its ideologically-motivated hyperfocus on destruction of IS, the US could be creating the possible conditions for another violent disaster.
The major flaw associated with US military action against IS is that it has become the focus of their campaign against the group. They have defined themselves through the acquisition of territory and establishment of a Caliphate and the US has defined their attitude towards them by trying to physically tear it down with force. Military gains are necessary in some ways; their claim to a Caliphate is further discredited the more land they lose, and that could cause the group to lose some appeal to potential recruits. But these actions alone are not the solution and do not prevent people from identifying with, joining, or remaining loyal to IS.
Although policymakers have made attempts to create CVE programming domestically, it is far from the focus of their dealings with IS. There’s a perception held by many that Western- funded and/or Western-executed CVE programs might be off-putting to people in the MENA region and could be perceived as an extension of Western domination and even as propaganda.233 Although this is a real possibility, some local organizations—especially in states experiencing conflicts like Syria—don’t have the resources to combat radicalization. If trusted
232 Davis, Martini, and Cragin, “A Strategy to Counter ISIL as a Transregional Threat.” 233 Corker et al., The Spread of ISIS and Transnational Terrorism.
85 local community members were given the resources to structure and execute their own programs, perhaps they could make an impact.
Violent extremism remains a symptom of a larger problem going untreated. Even if the
US were to sponsor CVE programs in places like Syria and Iraq and allowed the locals control to retain legitimacy, they would run into one major problem: actually targeting populations that are vulnerable to engage in violent extremism and effectively mitigating some of these uncertainties that lead people to join IS. Because there is still such a large disagreement and misunderstandings of what exactly it is that causes people to be attracted to violent extremist movements, the worry here is that current efforts could potentially waste funding and/or make the situation worse. Just because local leaders and organizations have some measure of community trust does not mean that they understand why people are motivated to join IS.
Berger provides some working ideas. Although structural arguments have made up the bulk of historical understandings of violent extremism, they have largely been discredited as their claims don’t entirely hold up or explain why people don’t participate in violent extremism in some areas where they might be expected to.234 But the spirit of these factors, such as poverty or the presence of insurgencies, can still have an impact on individuals by filling their lives with uncertainty.235 Berger argues that one of the reasons extremist ideology works is it provides people with a view of the world that is hand-tailored to make sense; “although the theories themselves are intricate, their conclusions are straightforward: the in-group’s
234 USAID, “Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism.” 235 Berger, Extremism.
86 problems stem from the out-group’s actions. Countering the out-group solves the problems.”236
This provides members with a sense of security and a sense of belonging that they might be lacking in other places.
If this is the case, there’s hope for moving forward. Although there is no way to remove uncertainty from the world, there are ways to provide assistance to people who are experiencing them, be it mental or physical health assistance, social integration, or stable housing. There are a myriad of problems and dealing with them is easier said than done, but this does suggest that people living under fair and stable governments where they can have a real expectation of what their life is going to be like might be a place less likely to produce people who wish to engage in violent extremism. In the meantime, it might be worthwhile as the military operations against IS decrease to reallocate some of that money to assisting local rebuilding efforts for areas affected by IS.
Conclusion
The Islamic State has certainly provoked a strong global response and captured the attention of people everywhere. They are perhaps the first violent extremist organization to realize what an invaluable tool the internet and social media are to facilitate recruitment and ease of transnational operations, and it’s something we’ll certainly be seeing in groups like this going forward. IS has been the main driving force behind the switch from previous methods of counterterrorism to this new conception of CVE policy. Unfortunately, the way that CVE policy
236 Berger.
87 is being applied domestically in the US disproportionately targets Muslims, and the way it is applied internationally relies on military action against violent extremist groups. These efforts are incomplete at best and harmful at worst. Ultimately, the way to effectively deal with IS would be to recognize them as no different than other violent extremist organizations and treat them as such.
The next chapter contains the second case study, which examines the Irish Republican
Army and the conflict in Northern Ireland. It begins by providing a brief background on the conflict, then gives some information about both the Protestant and Catholic application of religion to the conflict. Although Ian Paisley, a Protestant, was generally more religiously extremist than many of the Catholic actors, the IRA was more widely labeled a terrorist organization and was the main perpetrator of violence. For that reason, the case study will mainly focus on the IRA. The organizational structure of the IRA is highlighted in the next section, including information about the two recruitment surges that occurred during two major events of the conflict, Bloody Sunday and the prison hunger strikes. The international response to the conflict will then be examined. The British assumed direct control over
Northern Ireland in 1972, dissolving the government in an attempt to get the violence under control. The general consensus between world powers was that it was an internal issue and was not something that should be intervened upon, but continuing concerns over possible human rights abuses led some states to encourage a possible peace process. The US was a big supporter of peaceful reconciliation between the involved parties, and a large portion of Irish-
Americans actively called for a peace process. The next section discusses the Good Friday
Agreement, which was the result of negotiations that began with an IRA ceasefire in 1994 and
88 was the result of a 4-year negotiation facilitated by Britain, the Republic of Ireland, and the US and involving all parties to the conflict. Finally, it will conclude with an analysis of American and
British policy that demonstrates that both states perceived the IRA as a rational, political organization with political goals that was capable with negotiation and not conceptualized through the lens of ideologic absolutism that is often used to study Salafi-Jihadi groups.
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Chapter 4: Case Study: Northern Ireland
Background to the Conflict in Northern Ireland
The conflict in Northern Ireland, dubbed “the Troubles” by many, occurred from the late
1960s to the late 1990s. The base material disagreement that spurred the conflict was the desire of the Catholic Republicans to unite Northern Ireland with Ireland under one rule, and the desire of the Protestant Unionists to keep Northern Ireland bound to Great Britain as it was.237 Ireland was partitioned in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, giving Britain sovereign power over the northern territory.238 Britain encouraged Protestants from Britain to settle there, and they did. Catholics were increasingly marginalized, encouraging nationalistic feelings to boil over when Catholic protests quickly led to public disorder and later the formation of paramilitary groups.239 In 1972, Britain assumed direct rule over Northern Ireland and tried to improve the lives of Catholics, but by then the nationalists were committed to the idea that the only way they could truly have the political rights they deserved was to unite with the whole of
Ireland.240
The Troubles are often discussed by invoking a plethora of both religious and nationalist language and causes, and it’s important to note before delving deeper into the case study that both causes of motivation are not only equally as valid, but completely related to each other.
237 Nigel Biggar, “Forgiving Enemies in Ireland,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 36, no. 4 (2008): 559–79. 238 Jonathan Stevenson, “Peace in Northern Ireland: Why Now?,” Foreign Policy, no. 112 (1998): 41–54, https://doi.org/10.2307/1149034. 239 Stevenson. 240 Stevenson.
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The conflict can largely be described as “a major convergence of religion and nationalism,” as people from both sides relied heavily on an understanding of their context through the use of both religious and national identity to both form opinions and adopt morally acceptable actions and reactions.241 Although religion doesn’t play a major part in everyone’s understanding of the conflict equally, the narrative of the conflict often cedes some focus on the religious dynamics and religious descriptors are employed almost interchangeably with ethnonational descriptors of the parties to the conflict.
Ian Paisley is understood by many to have been a major source of employing religious narratives to legitimize violence in the conflict.242 He founded his own Protestant church, the
Free Presbyterian Church, which openly mixed religion with nationalism and political ideology and included iconography of national symbols beside religious ones in the chapel. During sermons, Paisley openly prayed for revenge on specific politicians and encouraged and empowered his followers into taking these matters into their own hands and acting to bring about justice.243 By 1999, his church had 70 establishments and 12,000 followers across the world.
Paisley was also directly involved in politics. He created the Democratic Unionist Party
(DUP), and supporters of this party shared his moral and political opinions and believed strongly that religion had an important place in public life. Paisley believed that Protestantism was under attack by Catholics and “apostate Protestants,” and had posited himself as one follower
241 Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. 242 Juergensmeyer. 243 Juergensmeyer.
91 called him, the “defender of the faith.”244 Even though Paisley publicly announced in 1989 that the DUP was severing ties with the Ulster Defense Forces (UDF) because of their terrorist activities, the UDF still supported Paisley and “it is clear that [they] received spiritual sustenance and moral encouragement from Paisley’s statements.”245
Perhaps one of the reasons violence-inclined Protestants looked to Paisley for justification for their actions is due to a lack of religious validation from official clerical institutions. The four largest churches in Northern Ireland released a statement together in
1970 saying religion wasn’t a part of the conflict, something that people generally didn’t like due to a desire to receive support from their religious leaders in what they saw to be a religious conflict.246 The Catholics faced a similar situation; even though clergy said that members of the
Irish Republican Army (IRA) were not true Catholics, they continued to receive support by many and were considered a major part of the Northern Irish Catholic community even as late as the mid-1990s.247
The Provisional IRA, often just called the IRA, was officially formed in 1969 as a self- proclaimed successor group to the original IRA that operated during the Anglo-Irish War.248
Although Paisley inspired Protestant violence, the bulk of the violence during the Troubles was perpetrated by Republican Catholics; an estimated 55.7% of the deaths were caused by them,
244 Juergensmeyer. 245 Juergensmeyer. 246 Nukhet Ahu Sandal, “Religious Actors as Epistemic Communities in Conflict Transformation: The Cases of South Africa and Northern Ireland,” Review of International Studies 37, no. 03 (July 2011): 929–49, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210510001592. 247 Fionnuala O Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press Limited, 1994). 248 PBS, “The Ira & Sinn Fein,” 1999, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/etc/cron.html.
92 mainly through the IRA as it was the primary Republican militia.249 Although they started as a
Catholic defense force, as British involvement grew they became focused on military action against British troops in an attempt to get them to withdraw.250 They carried out bombings and other terrorist-related activities that were aimed at political targets with a tolerance for civilian death.
Because the scope of violence perpetrated by the IRA is significantly larger than that of the Unionist paramilitaries (which accounted for about 27.4% of deaths251) and because the IRA remains the main focus of most terror-related analyses of the conflict in Northern Ireland, I will focus on the IRA and Catholic identity in this case study more than their Protestant counterparts.
Organizational Structure of the Irish Republican Army
The IRA shares the same basic structure that all violent extremist organizations do. They are defined by one or more identities that clearly establish who is in the group, who is eligible to join the group, and who is in the out-group. Violent extremist narratives claim that the out- group’s very existence is a threat to the in-group, and that the only possible solution to the suffering of the in-group is for the out-group to be eliminated.252
249 Biggar, “Forgiving Enemies in Ireland.” 250 Kim Cragin and Peter Chalk, “Northern Ireland,” in Terrorism and Development (RAND Corporation, 2003), 5–13. 251 Biggar, “Forgiving Enemies in Ireland.” 252 Berger, Extremism.
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The nature of these specific narratives that vary by group are crucial for the understanding of recruitment strategies and understanding how the group posits itself within its context. In the case of the IRA, continuing tensions between Northern Ireland and Britain and the polarization between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland left the group with fertile ground for recruitment and a complex narrative of struggle with which to implant itself.
The closeness of the Catholic community and the relatively small area of influence the IRA had with regards to its size meant that a large share of Catholics knew someone who was a member.253 As mentioned previously, there are no extremists, only people who ‘do extremism.’
Before the conflict, the people who would later become members of the IRA were connected to family, friends, and neighbors. People that knew someone who had been in the IRA reported that it made it easier to ignore or downplay the violence committed by the group when someone they loved and trusted was involved with it.254
Leaders of the IRA maintained their Catholic identity throughout the struggle, and many
Catholics perceived the IRA as a Catholic actor despite the church authorities not supporting them. This question of authority required that the IRA justify that their actions don’t fall outside the typically nonviolent realm of Catholicism, so in order to do so, they sought doctrinal support. They were able to find this support in papal documents dating from the time around the Second Vatican Council that outlined the conditions for “just war.”255 They published these criteria in 1973: “(1) The regime is tyrannical, (2) the leaders have a “mandate” [...] for their
253 O Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland. 254 O Connor. 255 Nicola Rooney, “Violent Nationalism in Catholic Communities: The Provisional IRA and ETA,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 7, no. 3 (2007): 64–77.
94 actions, (3) peaceful means have not proved fruitful, (4) the Rising has a real hope of success,
(5) and the campaign is carried out with a due sense of proportion.”256 They advocated the position that under normal circumstances, they would prefer peaceful resolution, but that tyranny was a dire situation that required violence to overcome despite the lack of support from the larger Catholic religious institutions.257 This is very similar to the way IS supports its case for violence through the necessitation of holy war. Although IS lacks popular support in the worldwide Muslim community, they argue that the conditions have been met in order to enact violence to protect Muslims and Islam. Catholics in Northern Ireland felt that their identity was under attack and sought doctrinal support to retaliate in the same way IS did. The IRA was so embedded in the wider Catholic community that an attack on them was perceived by many to be an attack on the larger Catholic community and on Catholic identity, even though they were detached from church authorities.258 Although both IS and the IRA present a narrative positing themselves as the defenders of their faith, both groups end up using their power to push past this into carrying out offensive missions as well, thus giving states more reasons to target their communities.259
Like IS, the IRA is essentially an “ordinary [organization] operating at a tremendous disadvantage.”260 They face the same problems with recruitment and organization that nonviolent groups face but must handle them in a different way due to their need to operate at least somewhat covertly. Even though the IRA could at one point organize openly within
256 Rooney. 257 Rooney. 258 Rooney. 259 Rooney. 260 Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma.
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Catholic communities without fear of being reported to the constabulary,261 the necessity to remain covert in planning and execution of attacks remained.
The closeness of the Catholic community and the identification of Northern Irish
Catholics with each other is perceived by many directly involved to have played a major role in the recruitment of members to the IRA.262 In 2006, former “middle management” members of the IRA who had served time in prison but were released as part of the peace agreement were surveyed and interviewed about their involvement and work within the IRA and why they decided to join. The accounts of these individuals, who were often from mid- to low-income families but had attained higher education, illustrate the experiences of adolescents in the beginning of the Troubles and show how these people understood their journey from these experiences to their involvement in the IRA.
All of the participants of this study note feeling “hostility between [their] community and the British army” as young as 11.263 They had memories of repressive measures taken by the British, most notably early morning house raids, stop and search tactics, and internment.
These people personally considered these early humiliation and harassment to directly be one of the reasons for their later involvement with violent extremism.264 Even though these struggles were endured throughout the Catholic communities of Northern Ireland, not all
261 O Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland. 262 Campbell and Connolly, “Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland”; O Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland. 263 Campbell and Connolly, “Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland.” 264 Campbell and Connolly.
96 people became members of the IRA, suggesting that there are other factors involved in making the choice to join and commit violence.
Although the IRA received a slow stream of recruits throughout the conflict, most of their members joined in two major short bursts: one from 1972-3, and one from 1981-3. The first burst of recruitment happened soon after the killing of 13 Catholics by the British during a civil rights march, known as Bloody Sunday, and coincided with the beginning of British direct rule and internment.265 Due to the increasing amount of violence in the country, Britain decided that the Northern Ireland Government was incapable of dealing with the terror on its own and dissolved their rule over the law and order of the country.266 Through this move, the British were trying to prevent the situation from worsening by allowing the overwhelmingly
Protestant-dominated government from trying to impose a rule that favored their own side of the sectarian conflict. Although British rule still struggled to establish peace and angered many throughout their control, the conflict remained between the inhabitants of Northern Ireland and did not spark major mobilization outside of the territory. So even though Britain had a stake in the conflict, they did not have the same emotional connection to the identity politics of the conflict that the inhabitants of Northern Ireland did.
The second recruitment burst occurred around the height of the prison hunger strikes by Catholics convicted of terrorism as regular criminals who were protesting prison conditions and not being given Special Category status.267 This is an political tactic that demonstrates that
265 PBS, “The Ira & Sinn Fein.” 266 “Direct Rule, 1972 - CCEA - Revision 1 - GCSE History,” BBC Bitesize, n.d., https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zwv3y4j/revision/1. 267 PBS, “The Ira & Sinn Fein.”
97 these Catholics understood themselves as members of the political system, and not outlier terrorists that fell outside of the fold of regular society. Hunger strikes historically have been used to signify the belief that someone has been treated unfairly, and that they are due more respect or dignity than they have been given. The narrative of suffering conveyed by this move inspired others to fight for the rights of these people as a part of their community.
These recruitment bursts have three things in common. First, perception of in-group repression caused the eligible in-group members who were considering joining the IRA to finally make the choice to do so.268 These events acted on their already strong sense of community and lead them to identify with the extremist in-group in the face of mass repression and violence aimed at the larger identity group. Secondly, the repressive actions inhabited a legal
“grey zone” that made the legitimate legality of British actions unclear and not immediately apparent, both with regards to domestic and international law.269 In these types of situations, legal mechanisms and responses aren’t always expedient, and may have made it more attractive for citizens to take matters into their own hands. Lastly, the spike in IRA recruitment was preceded in both cases by a mass mobilization of nonviolent activism, of which a fraction became violent vis-à-vis subsequently joining the IRA.270 These factors allowed “violent entrepreneurs” in the IRA to capitalize on these experiences to drive recruitment.271
268 Campbell and Connolly, “Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland.” 269 Campbell and Connolly. 270 Campbell and Connolly. 271 Campbell and Connolly.
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American Response to the Conflict in Northern Ireland
In the early days of the conflict, the United States expressed a desire to remain uninvolved. In February of 1972, just days after the deadly Bloody Sunday event, then Secretary of State William Rogers said that “it would be both inappropriate and counterproductive for the
United States to attempt to intervene in any way in the area [of Northern Ireland].”272 The general consensus during the Nixon administration was that this was not a matter that the US could help in, and was an issue that remained outside of their ability to assist. The Ford administration continued this message, leaving the dealings of the conflict largely up to the
Department of State. The department decided that because Britain was more connected to the conflict and better understood its intricacies and the direct impact of any possible courses of action, if Britain didn’t have a solution, then the US (who were further removed from the conflict) certainly didn’t have anything helpful to contribute.273 This was the official position of the US until 1977, when President Carter expressed the belief that the conflict in Northern
Ireland was a foreign policy concern of the US. Although he remained neutral, he expressed the desire for a peace settlement. President Reagan continued this message, with the desire to
“encourage the process of peaceful reconciliation.”274
Leading up to President Carter’s announcement was an increase in political lobbying from people representing the millions of Irish Americans who felt that the US’s policy of non- involvement was ignoring an issue they cared about. These Irish-Americans created political
272 Joseph E. Thompson, “United States-Northern Ireland Relations,” World Affairs 146, no. 4 (Spring 1984): 318– 39. 273 Thompson. 274 Feargal Cochrane, “Irish-America, the End of the IRA’s Armed Struggle and the Utility of ‘Soft Power,’” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 2 (2007): 215–31.
99 organizations and during this time advocated for a nonviolent solution to the conflict. Some attribute their voice as being crucial to bringing about the eventual Good Friday Agreement that formally ended the violence.275
In the end, the ‘intervention’ by the United States into the conflict took on a different form than American intervention has in the past within other contexts. While the threat of military power and coercion have become familiar tactics employed within US-brokered settlements, such a thing was absent in the Northern Ireland peace process and the main focus was on the utilization of ‘soft power’ to persuade each side to accept the terms of the Good
Friday Agreement and allow for mutual concessions and benefit.276
The Good Friday Agreement
On August 31, 1994, the IRA called a unilateral ceasefire, followed six weeks later by the
Unionists.277 This began the peace process that ended April 10th, 1998 in the creation of the
Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Negotiations occurred between the involved parties in Northern
Ireland and the British, Irish, and American governments. Although some small-scale violence continued after the agreement by minor splinter groups, this is generally recognized to be the
275 Cochrane. 276 Cochrane. 277 Stevenson, “Peace in Northern Ireland.”
100 end of the conflict.278 Once the GFA put to a referendum, 71% of people in Northern Ireland supported it and 94% of people in the Republic of Ireland did.279
The most important factor that led to the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Northern
Ireland is the perception on both sides that the violence they perpetuated wasn’t sustainable and would not benefit either group in pursuing their goals. Sein Fein president Gerry Adams said that “armed struggle had in the past been the only means of resistance available to republicans but that the circumstances had changed such that republican objectives could now be pursued through purely political methods.”280 Unionists followed suit with the understanding that their inflexibility was not conducive to peace, casting aside figures like Ian Paisley to allow for more moderate opinions open to negotiation.281
The influence of religion in the conflict was compared not to immutable ideology, but to the politically constructed national identities of Protestants and Catholics.282 Religion wasn’t really viewed as a sole motivator for violence in this case, but as a component of individual identity on which a base for a shared community was formed. The general understanding of faith as a part of the conflict was through attachment to narratives of group oppression more than it was about claims about how one should live their life according to a specific religious ideology (as can be seen with IS). Catholics understood themselves as oppressed and unable to seek their desired religious and personal lives due to institutionalized discrimination, and many
278 “Northern Ireland Killings: History of the Troubles,” The Telegraph, March 11, 2009, sec. News, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/4973965/Northern-Ireland-killings-history-of-the- Troubles.html. 279 PBS, “The Ira & Sinn Fein.” 280 Thompson, “United States-Northern Ireland Relations.” 281 Stevenson, “Peace in Northern Ireland.” 282 Mairead N Craith, Culture and Identity Politics in Northern Ireland, 2003.
101 understood their membership in the IRA as an extension of their Catholic identity. Because of the willingness of all parties to engage the IRA and Sinn Fein in dialogue and compromise, the peace process was about mediation and addressing sociopolitical needs of both communities, making the justification for violent action based on the criteria set by the IRA no longer applicable.
The peace process was possible because both actors were rational and conducted their actions within the political system for political reasons; they were perceived to be a part of the larger Northern Irish community and not as extremists outside the folds of civil society that couldn’t be reasoned with. There were moments during the ceasefire and peace process itself that some members of the IRA conducted smaller violent acts, but even so, this did not result in their expulsion from the peace process.283 Ireland firmly believed that the IRA and Sinn Fein would agree to a settlement given the “proper circumstances”, so their involvement continued to the end of the talks. They were perceived as capable of compromise and negotiation because they were understood to be acting politically with political, and not religious, goals. The importance of religion was not emphasized nor understood to be a major direct component to the conflict, and so there was optimism in negotiation even as the violence continued.
The peace talks between the Catholics and Protestants were held in an environment where both parties felt like they had international support through their guarantors Ireland and
Britain respectively and that EU as a whole was there to support their resolution. These talks happened at a time where neither Ireland nor Britain had strong opinions about whether
283 Thomas Hennessey, The Northern Ireland Peace Process (Palgrave, 2001).
102
Northern Ireland was a part of them or not; the area was of strategic importance to Britain during the Cold War, but by this point the Cold War had ended.284 The formation of the
European Union also made the specifics of sovereignty slightly less important within Europe.
The GFA maintained that Northern Ireland is under British sovereignty (until a majority desire otherwise), causing Ireland to repeal Articles 2 and 3 of their constitution that claimed the territory.285 It also created a regional government for Northern Ireland comprised of both
Catholics and Protestants, and also created shared governing bodies between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland composed of members of both parties’ governments.286
Additionally, the agreement expressed a desire for Irish nationhood not to be determined by borders, allowing those who strongly connect with their Irish identity to retain that connection in a more meaningful way. The diversification of the main regional governing body by allowing greater Catholic participation also served to comfort those who felt like they were discriminated against before while the Protestants held an overwhelming majority of the political power.
Analysis of US and British Policy in Northern Ireland
In the beginning of the conflict, the United States did not believe they had a role in intervention and that IRA terrorism was an internal problem of Northern Ireland, not a foreign policy concern of the US. The dominant attitude was that because it was official territory of
284 Stevenson, “Peace in Northern Ireland.” 285 Stevenson. 286 Stevenson.
103
Britain, it was their responsibility to deal with the situation, and it only affected the US insofar as it affected Britain. The US eventually became involved for two reasons: the constant lobbying of Irish-Americans, and the concern of human rights abuses originating in a country that was not only a global power, but a close US ally.287
Even when the US became involved, it wasn’t through military action. They didn’t send troops to Northern Ireland to round up IRA members or train local groups to combat them, nor was there a strong message that the violent extremists would never accept any sort of compromise and must be eliminated, like there is with IS. When America intervened, it was to encourage peaceful reconciliation. American leaders expended great effort to provide an environment where de-escalation and peace talks were possible.288 Some people who had been imprisoned for terrorist activity through their connections to the IRA were even released as part of the peace process.289 Although there were still fresh wounds on both sides, the importance of recognizing the legitimacy of both parties’ concerns was recognized and external support and political openness was provided vis-à-vis American, British, and Irish oversight in the peace process and a desire by all to collaborate and find a solution that was fair and just to everyone.
Britain did what it could to de-escalate the conflict soon after it started. It imposed direct rule over the territory in 1972 in an attempt to get things under control, but by this point the building tensions had already boiled over. Because the IRA conducted as much violence as it
287 Cochrane, “Irish-America, the End of the IRA’s Armed Struggle and the Utility of ‘Soft Power.’” 288 Cochrane; Thompson, “United States-Northern Ireland Relations.” 289 Campbell and Connolly, “Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland.”
104 did, many policies had to be implemented to deal with these actions in ways that weren’t as necessary for the Protestants as the previously dominant group. Because of this, most people imprisoned for terror were Catholics. Although there were some issues with the prison conditions during the conflict, IRA prisoners were released as part of the peace process, highlighting the fact that in this case, Britain acted on the basis that violent extremism was an action, not a state of being. They recognized the violence as a political move and did not believe these individuals to be inherently violent people. This is different than IS members are conceived of in the modern day; they are treated as dangerous people regardless of context.290
What if this conflict had been handled the way that current CVE efforts have handled IS?
The Catholic identity of the IRA would have been emphasized as a major motivator for the group’s actions, causing a great deal of focus to be placed on studying how radical interpretations of Catholicism could lead to the necessitation of violence. Catholics worldwide would find themselves suddenly in a situation where people understand their religion as a justifier of violence and treat them as if they too supported the violence somehow, after having heard their politicians denounce the IRA as an evil group with an evil agenda that can’t be reasoned with. Having a clearly communicated unwillingness to negotiate with the IRA, not just by Britain but by almost every Western nation, would have increased animosity between the
IRA and Western governments. The IRA wouldn’t feel safe enough to offer up a ceasefire and seek out their goals politically because nobody would be interested in hearing them out. Even if there were a precedent for handling negotiations with terrorists, they would be seen as a
290 Al-Jazeera, “Donald Trump Demands Europe Take Hundreds of ISIL Fighters.”
105 special group that was not eligible to participate because they are unable to compromise due to the apolitical nature of their religious goals. Northern Ireland would have become a battleground as international actors intervened, which may or may not have sparked an insurgency. There would be civilian casualties vis-a-vis bombing campaigns aimed at IRA strongholds, and many people would likely be displaced. Western states would likely implement domestic CVE programs aimed at their Catholic populations to prevent them from becoming radicalized into joining the IRA.
This makes no sense and would undermine every article and account that stresses that religious identity was not a significant component of the IRA’s motivation. Catholicism and
Protestantism were as much identities as they were markers of community and were treated as such. There was a minimal amount of external influence and because of this, the violence took place on a much smaller scale than the violence in Syria where countless actors are involved.
Both sides of the conflict had a clearly stated and circulated political motivation for their violence and were perceived as rational actors operating within the international system to achieve their goals rather than as outsiders. To address the IRA in the same way as IS has been addressed would be uninformed and foolish, suggesting that the US and other Western nations are struggling to effectively manage violent extremism under the influence of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism.
106
Conclusion
Despite the conflict’s official end, the memory of what happened still lingers in the public mind. Neighborhoods and schools are to this day segregated between Catholics and
Protestants, with walls often dividing neighborhoods from each other.291 Commemoration of individuals and events remains a hot topic within local communities, politics, and scholarship.
Tensions may still exist, but there have been some undeniable improvements as a result of the peace agreement. Paramilitary organizations are now illegal and the small splinter groups that remain have been forced underground, becoming more akin to criminal networks rather than political organizations.292 Catholics and Protestants share power in the regional government and
Northern Ireland shares a governing council with the Republic of Ireland, allowing communication and a coordination of governance where there was no previous institution to facilitate and officiate it.293
Perhaps the most important part of the peace process was the mutual respect given to
Catholics and Protestants, both in terms of recognizing grievances and accepting their political agency. The support of the EU and US gave both sides the security they needed to feel that they could negotiate without the fear of being taken advantage of. The willingness of both Britain and Ireland to respect the wishes of Northern Ireland facilitated the process, as well as allowed for a clause in the GFA that said that Northern Ireland could change its sovereign status should
291 Ari Shapiro, “For Northern Ireland, Wounds From ‘The Troubles’ Are Still Raw,” NPR, November 28, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/11/28/367183005/for-northern-ireland-wounds-from-the-troubles- are-still-raw. 292 Shapiro. 293 Stevenson, “Peace in Northern Ireland.”
107 a majority of the population decide to do so.294 The GFA and the peace process leading up to it is widely regarded as being one of few success stories of resolving conflicts involving violent extremism295 and is, despite the existing tensions within the territory, looked upon by others as an example to follow when trying to curb this type of violence.
The final chapter begins by demonstrating how the shift from traditional methods of counterterrorism into what is now called CVE was informed heavily through interactions with
Salafi-Jihadi groups and reflects the way these groups are conceptualized. I will then conduct a comparative analysis of IS and the IRA to display that the differences between how these two cases were handled by the international community indicates an overwhelmingly strong tendency to subscribe to Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism when conducting CVE measures. Where the IRA was treated as a legitimate political actor, IS is perceived as an irrational actor with a commitment to a religious ideology that makes it unable to compromise. The chapter then discusses the flaws in the current American approach to IS. Both the domestic and international components of America’s CVE policy are problematic, inspired heavily by the idea of Salafi-
Jihadi exceptionalism, and ultimately unhelpful in the successful promotion of peace within the conflicts that it intervenes upon. Following this section is a speculative exploration into what it would mean to address IS and other Salafi-Jihadi groups without the ideologic absolutism and outside of the confines of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism and explains why this method may be more likely to create the conditions for sustainable peace.
294 Stevenson. 295 Shapiro, “For Northern Ireland, Wounds From ‘The Troubles’ Are Still Raw.”
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Chapter 5: Examination of Findings
Case Study Comparison
The conflict in Northern Ireland occurred in a time where scholarship and political actors viewed violent extremism through the lens of counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics. The way traditional counterterrorism was conducted heavily relied on addressing violent groups as insurgents. COIN tactics were heavily military-centric and focused on tactics that would strengthen the government while conducting a campaign against the violent groups. The recent focus on Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism has caused the US to re-evaluate their approach to these phenomena and shifted their modus operandi to what is now called CVE. Viewing these events and groups as grounded in violent extremism asks that people take into account multiple facets of group structure and ideology and consider that what motivates people to participate in violence may differ among members of the same group. The base structure for radicalization remains grounded in the categorization of people into the in-group, eligible in- group, and out-group as stated previously, but extremist recruitment tactics can sound appealing to potential members for different reasons.296 Through this shift to CVE, we’re starting to examine the sociopolitical factors that cause this sort of activity to be appealing to an individual in the first place.
296 Berger, Extremism.
109
Although there are still small, isolated attacks in Northern Ireland today, the Good
Friday Agreement has largely been heralded a success and a resurgence of violence comparable to the level of the Troubles hasn’t even come close to occurring. Violent groups like the IRA don’t have the same mass appeal that they once did, and power-sharing structures have resulted in a more equitable, although still somewhat segregated, society.297 The case of
Northern Ireland is one of very few modern examples of violent extremism being handled by the international community in a mutually respectful and efficient way where the primary goal was a long-term stabilization of the region heavily based on compromise from both sides.
The Islamic State and the conflict it has arisen within are perceived in a different way than the situation and parties to the conflict in Northern Ireland were. Although Catholic and
Protestant church institutions refused to encourage violence on either side and elected to remain outside of the Troubles and maintain a neutral and nonviolent stance,298 a nearly universal majority of Muslims have clearly denounced the Islamic State as un-Islamic and do not believe members to be Muslims. Unlike members of the IRA, members of IS are identified by their ideology, and the ideology that IS presents is commonly believed to be the personal stance and understanding of every member even though it’s abundantly clear that grunt members often don’t hold the same education level or sophisticated textual and interpretive understanding that the leadership does.299 This idea directly relates to Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism due to its tendency to portray the entire group to be bound to the core ideology in an uncompromising way. It’s attitudes like this that prevent any world power from
297 Shapiro, “For Northern Ireland, Wounds From ‘The Troubles’ Are Still Raw.” 298 Ahu Sandal, “Religious Actors as Epistemic Communities in Conflict Transformation.” 299 Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma.
110 considering IS a legitimate party to peace talks in the way that the IRA was in Northern Ireland.
The dominant belief is that IS is not capable of making compromises so they cannot be reasoned with, and therefore must be militarily destroyed. This assumption ignores the factors that cause IS members to become radicalized in the first place and does nothing to tackle the long-term drivers of violent extremism.
Periods of uncertainty and massive social demographic changes often coincide with outbursts of violent extremism.300 In Northern Ireland, the sudden presence and socioeconomic domination of Protestants left many Catholics feeling oppressed. In Syria and Iraq, the history of Western imperialism and recent autonomy has caused a sudden need to reconcile regional historical means of running society with the pressure to democratize, along with integration into global civil society. Although not all areas with disruption to the status quo are particularly vulnerable to violent extremism, it does tend to arise in places that have recently experienced something along these lines. Events like these trigger insecurity and the need to solidify connection to group identities as a means of survival and/or safety.301
The IRA announced their ceasefire in 1994 because they recognized that their goals were reachable in a purely political way.302 As participants in the peace talks, their concerns were taken seriously, and they were able to have a meaningful dialogue where they made some concessions in order to come to a mutually beneficial agreement. IRA members that were imprisoned for their involvement were released as part of the process. The IRA was viewed not
300 Berger, Extremism. 301 Berger. 302 Stevenson, “Peace in Northern Ireland.”
111 as a group of violent extremists, but as a group of people who were ‘doing’ violent extremism.
The nonessentialist counter-terrorism methods used to evaluate the actors in the Northern
Ireland conflict relied on the understanding that violence was manifesting as a symptom of a larger problem and did not identify the violence itself as the source of the problem but as an expression of it. For these reasons, there were no military operations carried out by external world powers within Northern Ireland. Such a move would have drawn a massive amount of criticism from the EU, which, despite human rights abuses, still perceived the conflict as an internal matter.
IS has not found themselves in a comparable condition. Most of the world has dubbed them an inherently violent threat to societal order and perceives them to be unwelcoming of any form of compromise or negotiation. Because of this, the priority of many states including the US has been military destruction. The world opinion of IS skews overwhelmingly negative, especially within Muslim communities in the West who are experiencing the rampant
Islamophobia that the recent surge of Salafi-Jihadi violent extremism has contributed to.303 The extreme nature of their propaganda assures that the relatively few who join them will be the most committed to their message, but it also provokes a strong resentment of the group by everyone else.
The lack of settlement opportunities is not due then to any inherent difference between
Salafi-Jihadi groups and other violent extremist groups like the IRA, but to the situation policymakers have surrounded them in through the application of their perceptions of them.
303 Lipka, “Muslims and Islam.”
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Because Western governments have demonized IS and have a historical rhetoric, particularly in the US, of not negotiating with terrorists, there is a lack of possible windows for peaceful solutions like there was with the IRA. The international community promoted the conditions for negotiations in Northern Ireland, while they seem intent on pushing Salafi-Jihadi groups out of any sort or peace process. The lack of recognition of IS as a legitimate actor and the increasing violent rhetoric used against them prevents situations arising where they might elect a political path to their goals as well. If they were given a chance, they might take it, but policymakers have already convinced themselves that they would never do it.
Members of the IRA were able to act within a political system for political goals. They were recognized as political actors and used tactics such as hunger striking that are meant to draw outside attention to their mistreatment. They spoke in terms of their rights, directly appealing to the political situation they found themselves in. People took them seriously as legitimate actors with legitimate goals in a way that nobody treats IS. IS is perceived to fall outside of the political sphere and regarded as irrational and often dehumanized in popular media. Rarely anyone attempts a deeper understanding of their motives because they have accepted the religious narrative the group has presented as truth.
Members of IS are objectified and coded as unchanging and uncompromising entities. A strong component of the ideology IS presents is the notion that Western societies and ideas are inherently evil, but world powers think the same of IS. This absolutist conception would make no sense if it was applied to the case of Northern Ireland. The IRA wasn’t talked about as having an inherent hate for Britain, and the global powers never believed that there was no possible way to resolve the conflict without killing all the IRA members. There was a belief that a
113 peaceful resolution was possible and involved parties did what they could to bring about the conditions for the creation of the GFA.
This suggests that something was different enough between the cases to provoke an entirely different response to what seems to be a similar problem. As was discussed, counter- terrorist policy began to shift focus in the Bush era from state sponsors of terrorism to the groups themselves.304 The US began targeting the leadership of violent extremist organizations for military attacks and began directly fighting these groups, which were mostly Salafi-Jihadi inspired and affiliated in some way with Al Qaeda. They were discussed in popular news media as threats to democratic values and free society, mostly without presenting a sophisticated analysis of these groups. The notion of Islamic exceptionalism has become a popular topic in academia as an attempt to explain the experiences with these groups and the interaction with these ideas have brought the topic—and sometimes fear—of Islam into focus within the
American public space. This represents an extreme and dynamic shift away from the promotion of reconciliation within the case of Northern Ireland and advocated for the conceptualization of
IS in a completely different way than the IRA.
Although the events of 9/11 were jarring to many, more people hold a negative view of
Islam today than they did three weeks after the attack.305 The attack wasn’t originally discussed as being about Islam in any way, but in the years following, somehow the public began talking about people as being ‘violent Islamic terrorists’. The subsequent focus placed on violent extremist groups may have caused more people to attribute Islam with violence. American
304 Jenkins, “Bush, Obama, And Trump: The Evolution Of U.S. Counterterrorist Policy Since 9/11.” 305 Telhami, “What Americans Really Think about Muslims and Islam.”
114 attitudes towards Muslims are improving;306 however, more Muslim Americans report having been discriminated against in the past year when polled in 2017 than was reported in 2007,307 and more Americans say that Muslims face “a lot” of discrimination than those polled in
2009.308 This suggests that even though overall acceptance of Muslims is improving, the people that do hold Islamophobic views are expressing them more. The outward Islamophobia and racism by elected officials mentioned in chapter 2 could also play a role in this shift.
Social media and the speed of information sharing has put people in a strange new relationship with events happening all over the world. Nobody fully understand what the effects of this mass interconnectedness are, but it has undoubtably changed the way people interact with people, events, and ideas. The speed with which people can receive large amounts of information, transformation of the I.T. sector, and the ability of minority social movements to have a significant online presence has generated a lot of uncertainty in the world as people navigate a plethora of changes to the old status quo.309 This process had yet to fully take hold during the conflict in Northern Ireland, but was beginning to arise when the “War on Terror” was first announced and played a major factor in the rise of IS and the global response to it. IS spent a large amount of effort on social media usage to circulate recruitment messages and to spread videos of their violent acts such as destruction of ancient art and executions.310 They have also utilized online forums and untracked messaging apps to communicate with potential recruits and overseas operatives.
306 Pew Research Center, “How the U.S. General Public Views Muslims and Islam.” 307 Pew Research Center, “The Muslim American Experience in the Trump Era.” 308 Pew Research Center, “How the U.S. General Public Views Muslims and Islam.” 309 Berger, Extremism. 310 Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate.
115
The transnational outreach efforts undertaken by IS and other Salafi-Jihadi groups provides a particular challenge. Because this is not a localized phenomenon as the conflict in
Northern Ireland was, there is a tendency to focus on the ideology as the primary motivator rather than sociopolitical conditions and/or personal uncertainty and unease. IS has attracted tens of thousands of Westerners and inspired people to leave behind their lives to join the fight in Syria, people from different backgrounds than what would typically be considered to be the aggrieved. But perhaps this isn’t about ideology and hard-set religious belief, at least not for everyone. What IS provides people is a clearly-defined position within an internally homogenous organization where everyone is tied by a set of common goals.311 For people who are experiencing a large amount of uncertainty (and possible discrimination) in their lives and find themselves morally willing to adjust their behavior to fit IS’s ideology in exchange for what seems to be a more secure and meaningful lifestyle, this can be an attractive option. In many ways, the IRA provided its members with the same thing. Catholics who felt oppressed within their own homeland and lacked the political agency to seek peaceful resolution could find meaning in the violent pursuit of rights. IRA membership provided a sense of community and legitimacy in the experience of uncertainty and desperation.
311 Berger, Extremism.
116
Flaws in the Current US Approach to the Islamic State
Ending the violence caused by IS and preventing resurgence have been long-term goals of both the US and the rest of the world, and the niche they’ve found within the Syrian conflict has added to the sense of urgency felt by world powers to act. The military fight against IS is drawing to a shaky close at my time of writing in March of 2019, and the anticipation of declaring the Levant “liberated” is abundant.312 Throughout the campaign against IS, the US has focused on two tactics: domestic ideological CVE aimed at preventing radicalization through countermessaging and social programming, and foreign military action directly against IS and its resources. Both have had their share of criticisms, and neither seem to promote long-term strategies for preventing people from engaging in violence.
Military action will not solve the problem of the Islamic State. It is expected that after their loss of territory, the organization will go underground.313 Additionally, the group has affiliates in other countries, both individuals and groups. Some predict that the so-called
“Caliphate” will shift to more primarily occupy a digital space rather than a physical one as their territorial presence in Syria dwindles,314 at least until they can find another unstable environment that they can thrive in.315 The Islamic State has emerged as the dominant Salafi-
Jihadi group in the contemporary world and at this point it is hard to believe that other Salafi-
Jihadi groups would try and oppose them at this point, not even Al-Qaeda. By focusing on
312 Al-Jazeera, “US-Backed SDF Says Fight against ISIL Enters ‘Final Moments,’” n.d., https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/syria-sdf-militia-predicts-isil-fight-imminently-190313031611626.html. 313 BBC News, “After the Caliphate.” 314 BBC News. 315 Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate.
117 destroying IS’s territorial holdings in Iraq and Syria, the US is focusing on short-term solutions and failing to address what comes after.
The US’s domestic CVE policy is also problematic. Online countermessaging, where ads for videos debunking IS ideology appear on pro-IS content, has potential flaws that make it hard to measure the real impact of them. Engagement with this content is on-par with typical ad standards316, meaning that they attract about as much attention as a Burger King ad would.
Only a small percentage of people that are attracted to IS are willing to take the drastic measures necessary to either travel and join them or carry out an attack where they live. All people who are considering these possibilities go through self-reflection and consider at different points of involvement if they are on the path they want to be on.317 If this is the case, to me it seems unlikely that those who are clicking on these ads and engaging with the countermessage are the ones that would otherwise become diehard members of IS.
Additionally, the videos themselves have no real authority to those attracted to the ideology of
IS; they were created by a Western government with the goal of dissuading potential recruits.
This can read like propaganda and may even cause people to double-down on their Salafi-Jihadi leanings out of fear that the video is trying to lead them astray. Because there is no way of gathering accurate information on how these videos make their target audience feel, it can’t be known whether or not any of this is going on and if this strategy is making any real impact.
The US’s efforts to create domestic programs to counter violent extremism has its flaws as well. Its focus skews overwhelmingly towards Muslims and specifically targets Muslim
316 Helmus and Klein, “Assessing Outcomes of Online Campaigns Countering Violent Extremism.” 317 Berger, Extremism.
118 communities318 when the risk of people becoming engaged in the ‘alt-right’ and other white supremacist groups in the US is far greater than the risk of engagement with Salafi-Jihadism.319
This emphasis on IS as the most dangerous terror threat comes from a place of institutionalized
Islamophobia in a time where such viewpoints are freely expressed by politicians without fear of repercussions. The tolerance of white supremacy and the fear of Muslims as being potentially more dangerous sews the distrust, uncertainty, and fear that motivates potential violence on both sides.
Neither of these attempts is addressing the issue of violent extremism as a phenomenon. They are fixated on the short-term prevention of individuals becoming radicalized into participation in violent extremism and not necessarily addressing the factors that spark the desire within people to become involved in such a thing. As previously discussed, violent extremism is an action, not an inherent quality of a person. When the IRA saw a nonviolent path towards achieving their goals, they took it. Violence isn’t a preferable or effective way to make gains and is undertaken out of a feeling of necessity. Although the specific understanding of why people participate in violent extremism isn’t without its contentions, there has been a great amount of progress within the field that should give insight as to what should be done to holistically minimize the draw to IS as well as IS’s need to act violently.
318 Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.” 319 Williams, “White American Men Are a Bigger Domestic Terrorist Threat than Muslim Foreigners.”
119
Addressing the Islamic State Without Ideological Absolutism
What would the US’s strategy towards the Islamic State be if it was not entrenched in the idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism? What would it mean to treat IS as IRA was treated and take them seriously as political actors? The US’s views of and actions toward IS have been characterized throughout their engagement with them by the idea that the only possible response to their violence is, in turn, violence. But even as the “end” of the military campaign against IS draws to a close, many are doubting that this is the end of things. Former director of the CIA Leon Panetta said in 2014 that “[he thinks] we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia,
Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere.”320 This situation won’t end with the military campaign in Syria, and it seems that a change in tactics will be necessary to minimize the potential damage as much as possible.
The most important change that both the United States and the international community must make is that they cannot continue to treat these groups as if they are incapable of negotiation and compromise. IS has political views and goals, bureaucratic structures, and now, some experience in managing the affairs of a quasi-state. Even though the pursuit of statehood is itself inherently political, the international community has deemed it unnecessary to advocate for a peaceful resolution that involves their input. In the case of
Northern Ireland, the IRA was encouraged to be a part of the peace process despite the violence they caused and the trauma that others suffered because of them. They were given an
320 Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate.
120 environment to work out a solution in a respectful way, and they ended up being more open to compromise than others expected they would be. If IS was extended the same opportunity, the results could be surprisingly beneficial. But because the US tends to believe that IS is driven primarily by an inflexible religious ideology, engaging in dialogue with them has yet to occur.
Throughout the US’s dealings with IS and other Salafi-Jihadi organizations, they have treated them like they are unreasonable actors that operate outside of the political system. An
Atlantic piece from 2016 claims that IS is “correctly not invited to international negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict [in Syria],” and that they as a group are inherently different than other violent extremist groups due in part to their commitment to irrational and/or apolitical goals informed by group ideology.321 Their goals are seen to be static and nonconditional on the context surrounding them. But violent extremist groups act the way they do for a variety of reasons, and if the circumstances around their embedded context changed, they could become more open to becoming regular actors.
Such was the case with the Taliban. The Taliban group in Pakistan offered up the option of peace talks in 2012 and garnered a variety of reactions.322 Although there was some skepticism, there also was a hope and a belief that peace talks could be a potential solution to the regional issue of Taliban violence. Some people recognized that “the United States must accept that a workable peace settlement will have to include a new Afghan constitution or institutional arrangements that allow the Taliban to become a legitimate part of the Afghan
321 H. A. Hellyer, “Why ISIS Cannot Be Negotiated With,” The Atlantic, January 10, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/what-to-do-about-isis-negotiations/423432/. 322 Arshad Ali, “Peace Talks with the Pakistani Taliban: Challenges and Prospects,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 5, no. 4 (2013): 11–13.
121 government.”323 This demonstrates the perception of the Taliban as a regular political actor with political goals that can be negotiated into a compromise. Just recently, the Taliban and the
United States sat down for their longest in-person peace talks so far throughout the process, which both sides came away from saying that it was a productive meeting.324 This progress displays the willingness of these groups to participate in peaceful settlements in the right conditions in the same way that the IRA in Northern Ireland did. In fact, most groups that are designated as ‘terrorist’ organizations come to an end through integration into the peace process, not through military defeat.325
Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine that negotiating with IS would find wide public support in the US, even though there was support of the peace talks in Northern Ireland. Some scholars are beginning to come to the conclusion that involving IS in discussion about the region’s future is an important component to establishing a lasting peace,326 but it doesn’t seem at all to be a consideration in the political sphere. Former UN Ambassador and current National
Security Adviser John Bolton said that “it has long been America’s unwavering, bipartisan policy not to negotiate with terrorists,”327 reflecting the larger stigma in American politics against seeking peace settlements with violent extremist groups. This mentality, coupled with the tendency towards adopting Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism, makes the idea of negotiation seem like a radical one. Congressman Jeff Duncan released a statement saying that “The attacks
323 James Dobbins and Carter Malkasian, “Time to Negotiate in Afghanistan: How to Talk to the Taliban,” Foreign Affairs 94, no. 4 (2015): 53–64. 324 Fay Abuelgasim and Kathy Gannon, “Longest US-Taliban Peace Talks See ‘progress’ in Qatar,” AP NEWS, March 12, 2019, https://apnews.com/ed7c4e471cbb44bba5b71d4ad03f9241. 325 Jones and Libicki, “How Terrorist Groups End.” 326 Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate. 327 “Obama Didn’t Negotiate With ‘Terrorists’ for Bergdahl,” Time, n.d., http://time.com/2809612/bowe-bergdahl- obama-taliban/.
122 around the world…are another reminder of our global conflict with radical Islam. It is an ideology that rejects the core ideals of democratic freedom and human rights.”328 He also called upon the US to “engage more forcefully in the battle of ideas to discredit the evil ideology and propaganda of ISIS [sic].”329 The way he and other politicians portray IS is as an evil entity that is incompatible with democracy and unable to be taken seriously as a political actor.
Consequently, this perception serves to weaken the possibility of a negotiated settlement by portraying IS as incapable of compromise.
It is clear that a loss of territory will not mark the end for IS. Having an open dialogue with IS delegations would be beneficial for addressing the events that have already unfolded, but there are other things that could be done as well to help prevent the desire of more people to become involved in violent extremism. Even though there isn’t broad consensus on what specifically leads people to joining violent extremist organizations, there are some ideas as to what sorts of environments tend to, for whatever reasons, promote violent extremism. In addition to negotiating with IS, it would be beneficial to work on the creation of conditions where violent extremism is less likely. IS was able to claim territory in Syria largely because of the power vacuum left by the political unrest and ensuing civil war. Areas of weak governance present two problems: the first is that they give groups like IS the opportunity to take advantage of the state’s shortcomings to establish zones of control, and the second is that their instability potentially causes citizens to experience the uncertainty that contributes to the need
328 “Duncan: Syrian Refugee Program Endangers Americans,” Congressman Jeff Duncan, November 16, 2015, https://jeffduncan.house.gov/press-release/duncan-syrian-refugee-program-endangers-americans. 329 “Rep. Jeff Duncan Issues Statement on the Obama Administration’s Syrian Rebel Training Program,” Congressman Jeff Duncan, October 14, 2015, https://jeffduncan.house.gov/press-release/rep-jeff-duncan-issues- statement-obama-administrations-syrian-rebel-training-program.
123 for structure that drives some people to join violent extremist organizations. Stable governments that can provide a societal structure that allows for participation in normal, meaningful lives and jobs don’t eliminate the attractiveness some feel to violent extremism, but it helps to give people meaning and predictability in their lives that they don’t have to go searching for.
Violent extremism is a manifestation of a larger issue, so it is important to understand that while these organizations are the ones that emphasize identity categorization, they aren’t the sole creators of these categories. There is no inherent definition of what it means to be a
Muslim, or a woman, or white; these are not naturally imposed categories but ones that are created in the social sphere, determined by human discourse, and are constantly in flux. Even though violent extremism is not solely about identity, recruitment tactics tend to use identity as a way to promote identification with the group and invocation of a shared past as well as a shared future in order to convince people that the group is where they truly belong.330 These narratives by nature must identify an enemy, one whose very existence is a threat to their group.331 It’s easy to see how wider societal discrimination, stereotyping, and inequality can feed into the impact of violent extremist recruitment strategies. Acceptance of diversity must exist in every level of society in order for real change to occur. Everyone needs to feel valued by their community and safe in their country. Discrimination at any level sows mistrust and fear, which can play directly into the narratives that violent extremists present. The international community should encourage and support local efforts to build a sense of unity and community
330 Berger, Extremism. 331 Berger.
124 between people in areas that have been affected by violent extremism. Additionally, citizens of
Western countries need to stop tolerating racism, sexism, and Islamophobia in their elected officials. This sends a message to marginalized groups that discriminatory behavior will not be tolerated. Trust-building should help to ease the uncertainty that some may be experiencing and help people feel more secure.
Studies have shown that youth are more likely to reject participation in violent extremism if their parents value peaceful resolution to personal conflicts and teach those values to their children.332 People tend overwhelmingly to radicalize in groups rather than individually, suggesting that social relationships matter a great deal for developing personal identity.333 Both accepting and rejecting violent extremism is a multi-step process, and so by giving more people stronger ties to civil society and an environment where they can form meaningful social ties through jobs, associational life, and public spaces, the pull of violent extremist organizations is being weakened because people already have what they are ‘selling’: consistent and defined social relationships and a purpose.
The best thing that can be done to prevent violent extremism in the long run is to promote equity in society. The US shouldn’t try to involve themselves in countermessaging; the
US government does not hold any ideological authority in any violent extremist circle, and these attempts can easily be perceived as propaganda and invoke a negative response in the intended audience. Additionally, demonizing groups like IS is counterproductive to their
332 Cragin et al., “What Factors Cause Youth to Reject Violent Extremism?” 333 Berger, Extremism.
125 ultimate goal of establishing peace. It demonstrates an unwillingness to compromise that only fuels the need for disagreements to be settled violently by both parties.
What we, as both the US and international community, must do is to understand the importance of establishing a dialogue with IS and to communicate with them not as violent people with an uncompromising ideology, but as people who are participating in violence for a reason and seek compromise with them. The concept of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism has negatively influenced the way that groups such as IS have been handled, and it is time to make a change and recognize that these groups are no different than other violent extremist groups.
Additionally, cross-cultural community-building must be promoted, both in areas that have experienced violent conflict and domestically countries. Discrimination only perpetuates the narratives that violent extremist organizations use to recruit. Although these are not comprehensive strategies, they are an excellent starting point for dealing with a phenomenon that has become even more visible in the last decade. If the US hopes to help accomplish lasting peace in places that have seen the major presence of violent extremism, they must be ready to try solutions other than military destruction and open ourselves up to more possibilities.
Conclusion
This thesis has examined how US policymakers’ perceptions of Islam as exceptional has changed the way they interact with violent extremist groups who claim to be acting in the name of Islam. At the root of Islamic exceptionalism is this belief that Islam as a religion is less likely than other religions to organically create a separation of political and religious authority. The
126 discussion on whether Islam and democracy can coexist is still at the forefront of the minds of many scholars and politicians as they look out on the contemporary political landscapes of
Muslim-majority countries. Although there is a call for sharia-inspired governing structures, it’s happening alongside a desire for democracy. The lesson that can be taken from this is not to examine Islamic holy texts and say that something shouldn’t work, but to listen to the millions of Muslims globally that believe that it can. Islam isn’t what Muslims are, it’s what Muslims do.
If they understand the two to be compatible, policymakers and governments should take their word for it.
Unfortunately, the notion of Islamic exceptionalism is still strong within scholarly and political discourse as well as among the general public of Western societies. This idea has given rise in the past few decades to the idea of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism, which is co-created through the shift to direct military action against violent extremist organizations that arose in the Bush era. Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism is the idea that Salafi-Jihadi violent extremist organizations are inherently different than other violent extremist groups due to their uncompromising commitment to their particular view of Islam that leaves them unable to be negotiated with. This classification has led to a massive military campaign aimed at the destruction of groups like the Islamic State.
The US approach to IS has two major parts: domestic CVE programming aimed at preventing radicalization in disproportionately Muslim communities and international CVE military operations that seek to reclaim territory from IS and eradicate the group. International efforts also have a focus on military intervention. These efforts make assumptions about the nature of IS based in Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism and take their claims of religious purism as
127 fact rather than engaging with or questioning it. They are not understood to be political actors due a place in the political process but are cast outside the bounds of society as irrational and unreasonable people.
In order to fully understand how Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism distorts the practices of contemporary states, I conducted a case study comparison between the IRA in Northern Ireland and IS. The conflict in Northern Ireland occurred before the shift in traditional counterterrorism measures to what is now called CVE. No external world powers intervened into the conflict due to the belief that it was an internal matter and Britain’s responsibility to handle. The IRA was structurally the same as IS with the same in-group/out-group construction but was treated completely differently. The IRA were understood to be acting within a political system, and their violence was seen as a political tactic rather than an implicit part of their identity.
Additionally, the religious component was not overemphasized in the way that it is with IS.
The IRA announced a ceasefire in 1994 because they saw the opportunity to advance their political goals in a nonviolent way. They believed that entering a peace process would not compromise the gains they sought and were willing to negotiate and make some concessions.
These talks were supported by Britain, the Republic of Ireland, and the US. Even though they had taken part in violent activities, they were respected as a necessary part of the peace agreement that the parties later reached.
IS is not treated like this. They are demonized in popular media and the US has a strong commitment to not negotiating with terrorists. Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism is so intrenched within the Western mind that it’s hard to imagine a majority anywhere supporting negotiation
128 with IS. With the military fight drawing to a close, many think that the group has already been dealt with despite many analysts estimating that the group will likely persist for quite some time still, perhaps spending some time operating covertly. There are reasons that people join these groups, and it’s different for everyone. People have reasons for enacting violence and seeking out membership in these groups, so military domination only “solves” the outgrowth of the real problem.
IS could be able to be negotiated with; however, Western nations have been unwilling to create the conditions that would allow them to negotiate. Integration into the political process has proven to be a more effective way to bring violent extremist groups to an end than military defeat, and there is a long history of doing these negotiations with other groups, such as the IRA and the Taliban. Even so, they have found themselves unable to accept this as a possibility for Salafi-Jihadi groups.
The only way to promote sustainable peace efforts is to include everyone in the process, even violent extremists and Salafi-Jihadists. Violence is not a preferable way to achieve goals, and if a group is given a chance to pursue their goals through the political field like the IRA was, it’s likely that they’ll take it. By not even accepting this as a possibility for Salafi-Jihadi groups, we’re destroying the conditions that would make it possible in the first place by demonstrating to them that they are not taken seriously as neither rational actors nor part of the political process. Once all notions of Salafi-Jihadi exceptionalism are left behind and it is understood that they too have political goals and are willing to compromise, the international community may begin to see more stabilization occurring in these areas.
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Thesis Approval Page
This thesis has been approved by
The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Political Science
Professor, Political Science
Thesis Adviser
Dr. Andrew Ross Director of Studies,
Political Science
______
Cary Roberts Frith Interim Dean,
Honors Tutorial College
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