Why did jihad go global?

In a recently published review article, Saer El-Jaichi and Mona Kanwal Sheikh discuss questions pertaining to the study of global jihadism, and its foundational moment.

El-Jaichi and Sheikh show that there is an important difference between focusing on individual ideologues - thereby centering the significance of ideology and charismatic personalities as the main drivers of the global jihadi movement - and focusing on other developments that have undergirded the globalization of conflicts such as changes in warfare techniques, particularly suicide attacks. Reviewing three books on the key ideologies, intellectuals and developments that led to the globalization of jihad, El-Jaichi and Sheikh bring two foundational questions to the fore: how does one account for the historical trajectory of global jihad, and what/who were its important facilitators?

The authors explain that the emergence of global jihadism has been a multi-layered process in which more than one current of the pan-Islamist movement played a role, and the dominance of any one branch cannot be understood except as part of the multifaceted dynamics of the Islamist resurgence in the Cold War context. Without appreciation for the essentially hybrid nature of this resurgence, and without awareness of other militant Islamist “revivalists” in the Shiite milieu and their influences in terms of ideology and perspective, it is not possible to comprehend fully why the radical Islamist discourse crystallized into a transnational and highly militarized engagement.

The review article is based on following books:

The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad, by Thomas Hegghammer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, March 2020, 695 pp.

Islam and Suicide Attacks, by Pieter Nanninga. Part of Elements in Religion and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, October 2019, 75pp.

Al-Qaeda 2.0: A Critical Reader, by Donald Holbrook. New York: Oxford University Press, January 2018, 320 pp.