Given the long roots of bayʻa (pledge of allegiance) in Islamic tradition and the controversial claim by the Islamic State (IS) to be a caliphate, the application of bayʻa to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his project is a contested issue among radical Islamists. Based on secondary literature and IS ideologues’ own writings, this paper analyses IS’s claims of validity in their calls for allegiance to “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and how radical Islamist critics of IS have responded to this. IS’s arguments resemble quite closely the theories on bayʻa that its jihadi opponents themselves claim to adhere to. Although the latter take their inspiration from early Islam and far less so from the theories that developed afterwards, it sometimes also appears as if they have idealised the caliphate so much that they find its reality as represented by IS hard to swallow.
Following the overthrow of Husni Mubarak, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad created two political parties. This article investigates these groups’ organizational dynamics and internal dialogues in order to uncover the rationale of their political participation after the January 2011 uprising and its internal ideational legitimization. Based on interviews with leaders and members of these two groups and their political parties, this article argues that these formerly violent insurgent groups embraced nonviolent participation in democratic politics through an internal reassessment of the political opportunities afforded to them by Egypt’s brief political opening.
Over the years, al-Qaida has become an increasingly decentralized movement in which its geographically dispersed affiliates have assumed increasing levels of autonomy over their tactical and strategic decision-making. At the outset of the Arab Spring, al-Qaida was also undergoing a process of strategic rethinking, in which more locally-sensitive and nationally grounded methods of operating were being encouraged as more effective paths towards durable jihadi projects. The Arab Spring itself also presented al-Qaida and its affiliates with opportunities to tie themselves more deeply into a collective sense of change across the Middle East. It was in Syria that this evolved level of thinking found itself most efficiently realized, as Jabhat al-Nusra sought to implement a modus operandi that was based on integrating and embedding itself into the Syrian revolutionary milieu through a combination of cooperation and [short-term] pragmatism. Jabhat al-Nusra’s embrace of this new model of jihad brought it substantial benefits, but as time passed, it also posed new challenges. By embracing localism so wholeheartedly over al-Qaida’s traditional internationalist agenda, Jabhat al-Nusra struggled to sustain the trust of its members who expected a truly fundamentalist face to eventually emerge. Moreover, despite its strong localist focus, too many Syrians still distrusted the group because of its continued links to a globalist jihadist movement. Jabhat al-Nusra therefore sought to differentiate itself from ISIS and was also forced to distance itself from al-Qaida, which set in motion a series of events that challenged the group’s successors’ – Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – internal unity and external credibility. It therefore appears that although HTS in 2017 maintains a potentially protectable base in northwestern Syria, the challenges that its unique strategy presented forced it to act in ways that undermined much of the sustainability progress it had made in previous years. Whether the group’s long game strategy of controlled pragmatism could be said to have been a success is therefore an open question.
A debate has emerged whether countries with Muslim majorities are intrinsically more likely to be autocratic. Recent studies have traced this to the allegedly repressive nature of Islam. This article replicates the most recent study on this topic, published in Public Choice (Potrafke in Public Choice 151:185–192, 2012), and demonstrates that the effect is not robust to a number of sensible alterations to the statistical specification. The effect between Islam and democracy is spurious. There is no causal relationship between Islam and democracy.
The jihadist group known as Islamic Caliphate, which already controls vast area of Syria and Iraq, and is a threat to the neighboring Arab countries has recently proclaimed the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate. The proclamation of a “new system” coming to the contemporary world would only seem vague, if the Islamic Caliphate which now simply calls itself Islamic State (al-dawla al-islamiyya), The sudden emergence of a Caliphate that was so drenched in blood had the world, in the words of one journalist, wondering: ‘Where did these hell hounds come from?. The emergence of the “Caliphate” – an “Islamic State” and the alleged criminal actions associated with this emergence raise a number of important issues in international law, namely: the concept of a state, recognition, the concept of a failed state, the Articles of State Responsibility, cultural property, international humanitarian law including the issue of humanitarian intervention, and the responsibility to protect, and the use of force. More importantly, these events raise the question of the purpose of international law “what is it good for” in the one hand, and what is the Jordanian putative policy in the other hand.
Differences in ideology as well as operational capacities with regard to financial and military strength and propaganda dissemination between Al Qaeda Central and its affiliates and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has led to a competition that has increased the terrorist threat and presented new challenges to regional and global security.
On 9/11, the global jihadist movement burst into the world’s consciousness, but a decade later, thanks in part to the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden, it is in crisis. With Western-backed dictators falling, al Qaeda might seem closer than ever to its goal of building Islamic states. But the revolutions have empowered the group’s chief rivals instead: Islamist parliamentarians, who are willing to use ballots, not bombs.