As an ideology mixed with world militancy, jihadism skilled a decline after the debacle of the Islamic State within the Syria-Iraq theater, whose warring parties didn’t reassert themselves, and al-Qaeda additionally misplaced its resonance. The arena is witnessing the exhaustion of this phenomenon and the destruction of its buildings, in Europe and France as an example, nations to which mass terrorism has stopped being exported. However is it now not extra cheap to talk of the “metamorphosis” of jihad, within the sense of a revolutionary and unfinished amendment of its paperwork and its nature? In her new ebook, Jihad: The Metamorphosis of the Danger, political scientist and global members of the family professor Miriam Benraad examines various preconceived notions about this heterogeneous motion.
Essentially the most skeptical will retort that dramatic tendencies such because the anti-Semitic assault on Bondi Seaside in December 2025, the autumn of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, the regime trade in Syria in December 2024 in desire of hardened jihadists, and even the growth of this motion within the Sahel states, the assassination of Sam Dominel20 Bernard20 3 years later and the assassination of Sam Dominel20 display that jihadism stays an energetic and murderous device of concept. The declare isn’t with out advantage.
However to talk of exhaustion does now not imply to conclude a definitive decline of concepts and folks. As a motion and a device, jihadism is long-term. On a number of events he overcame his disasters and the removal of his leaders. Survival illustrated in 2023 when, within the context of endured hostilities within the Heart East following the October 7 assault by way of Hamas on Israel, the “Letter to America” signed by way of Osama Bin Weighted down in 2001 resurfaced justifying the 9/11 assaults and urging Muslims to “avenge the people of the United States and Israel of all Palestinians.”
There may be, at the one hand, a transparent degradation of the teams and their management, their function and their features. We will be able to pass judgement on, however, that the extraordinarily tough geopolitical information, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the warfare in Ukraine and the hearth within the Gaza Strip, contributed to the danger receding into the background.
Media remedy now not has anything else to do with the IT frenzy that marked the former length. Even though the trauma of the wave of bloody assaults by no means totally healed, time slowly started to take its toll. Few electorate worry a repeat of the movements that devastated France in 2015 and 2016. No Frenchman now expects an assault related to the Bataclan assault.
However as the theory of metamorphosis suggests, to be reworked isn’t to vanish. Jihad, approached as a violent act of warfare, is in no way as robust because it as soon as used to be, and its recruiting doable has reduced. There has additionally been no jihadist internationalization of the Palestinian factor and no new flows of militants heading to the Heart East for the reason that closing Israeli-Palestinian warfare.
On the identical time, jihadism is operative in different spaces. Even within the minority, it operates in nations like Syria, Libya, Yemen, the place civil wars have left severe penalties and proceed to offer jihadists with area to function. In our societies, profiles of people who are liable to the information of this motion are frequently known and put out of threat. In any case, as a result of the promise of staying power and retribution, jihadists loudly proclaim their decision to live on and proceed to strike.
Let’s needless to say jihad can’t be decreased to warfare, regardless of the violence that continues to be the principle expression of recent jihadism. Past stereotypes and clichés, it is vital to grasp the plurality of meanings of this phrase and make a transparent difference between its theological interpretations and ancient manifestations, at the one hand, and its more moderen ideological meanings, at the different. Certainly, jihad isn’t jihadism regardless of the widespread confusion between the 2 phrases.
Denying the burden in their detrimental connotations may be now not one of the simplest ways to conquer commonplace prejudices, nor to offer components of a solution to a subject matter that continues to be related despite the fact that it now not grabs the headlines.
If we exclude the gravity of sure media and political excesses, jihad is a multidimensional object. The jihadist motion initially constituted by way of Sayyid Qutb, Abdallah Azzam and Osama Bin Weighted down has now not exhausted all its paperwork and buildings, a lot much less its affect. On the other hand, this heterogeneous personality is tricky to reveal in a context this is too regularly marked by way of polemics and controversies, particularly in France the place the murders of 2015 proceed to reverberate on a societal degree.
Ten years later, the commemorations of the November 13 assaults have proven how pervasive the hectic reminiscence of ultraviolence is and the way vital the desire for restorative justice is for sufferers, direct or oblique. On this regard, we obviously see the want to go back to the assets, Arabic and medieval, to be able to elevate the veil from power grey spaces. After all, the belligerent strategy to jihad evolved by way of the jihadists suits their ideals, however a great deal distorts the that means of Islam.
This passage is from Jihad. The Metamorphosis of Danger by way of Miriam Benrad, simply printed by way of Le Cavalier bleu.
In lots of feedback we additionally realize that Historical past is in large part absent. Jihadists imposed their ideological studying of the cases of the unfold of this faith, which they equate with army conquest. Actually, this enlargement used to be extra dispersed over the years, pluriform and multifactorial. It’s also richer than the descriptions given right here and there. The upheavals of new a long time can’t cover the truth that Islam gave start to a civilization that used to be as soon as magnificent and orientated in opposition to growth.
Jihadists also are some distance from distinctive of their imaginative and prescient of this previous and the approach to revive it. The “caliphate” as soon as claimed by way of the Islamic State used to be a reinvention of Islamic custom and has been symptomatically rejected by way of maximum Muslims. This good judgment of fragmentation of the jihadist box has been in follow for the reason that Nineties and the jihads in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia and Chechnya. Then the divisions between the actions have been exacerbated by way of the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, to call simply those crises.
A commonplace base, then again, defines jihadism, imbued with delusion and a strong creativeness. Since 9/11, 2001, maximum activists have rallied across the concept of a campaign allegedly waged by way of the West and its allies in opposition to Islam and its believers, a campaign to which globalized jihad should reply. This binary and Manichean illustration explains absolutely the intolerance of jihadists and their rejection of all variations, together with non secular variations amongst their co-religionists whom they declare to constitute and shield.
What are the reasons of jihadism? Pretending to provide a linear and unique resolution is an phantasm as a result of there is not any mounted device of interpretation. In a similar fashion, the person trips of jihadists replicate the absence of a regular profile, whilst radicalization and deradicalization should be tested in mild of exact reviews. For now, jihadism continues its metamorphosis, much less damaging than previously, however it’s going to be some distance, each within the Muslim global and in our societies, prior to it may be claimed to have defeated it.
