Constructing enemies: 'Islamic terrorism' in political and academic discourse

Government and Opposition

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 394-426

  Jackson, Richard ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34250878579     PISSN: 0017257X     EISSN: 14777053     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00229.x     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. The author wishes to thank Jenny Peterson for excellent research assistance in the preparation of this article and Jeroen Gunning, John Richardson, Tim Jacoby, Ilan Danjoux, Stuart Shields, Inderjeet Parmar, Stuart Croft and Wyn Rees for excellent comments that greatly contributed to its improvement. All remaining errors and omissions are solely my own.
2. Carol Winkler, In the Name of Terrorism: Presidents on Political Violence in the Post-World War II Era, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 2006, pp. 11-16.
3. Jennifer Milliken The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods European Journal of International Relations, 5 : 2 (1999 pp. 225 54.
4. Mark Laffey Jutta Weldes Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations European Journal of International Relations, 3 : 2 (1997 pp. 193 237 Purvis Alan Hunt Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology. British Journal of Sociology, 44 : 3 (1993 pp. 473 99 Yee The Causal Effects of Ideas on Politics International Organization, 50 : 1 (1996 pp. 69 108.
5. These shared commitments are explored in detail in Milliken, 'The Study of Discourse'.
6. Roxanne Doty Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines International Studies Quarterly, 37 (1993 pp. 297 320.
7. See Laffey and Weldes, 'Beyond Belief'.
8. For explanation of these techniques, see: Milliken, 'The Study of Discourse'; and Doty, 'Foreign Policy as Social Construction', p. 306.
9. Jutta Weldes Constructing National Interests European Journal of International Relations, 2 : 3 (1996 p. 284.
10. David Rapoport Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions American Political Science Review, 78 : 3 (1984 pp. 658 77.
11. Magnus Ranstorp Terrorism in the Name of Religion Journal of International Affairs, 50 : 1 (1996 pp. 41 62.
12. Jonny Burnett Dave Whyte Embedded Expertise and the New Terrorism Journal for Crime, Conflict and the Media, 1 : 4 (2005 pp. 1 18 Lewis The Roots of Muslim Rage Atlantic Monthly, 266 : 3 (1990 pp. 47 60.
13. Samuel Huntington The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72 : 3 (1993 pp. 22 49.
14. As'ad AbuKhali Book Review: "The Islam Industry" and Scholarship Middle East Journal, 58 : 1 (2004 pp. 130 8.
15. There is a large and sophisticated literature examining media representations of Muslims. See, among others: Elizabeth Poole and John Richardson, Muslims and the News Media, London, I.B. Tauris, 2006; Kai Hafez (ed.), Islam and the West in the Mass Media: Fragmented Images in a Globalizing World, Cresskill, NJ, Hampton Press, 2000; John Richardson, (Mis)Representing Islam: The Racism and Rhetoric of British Broadsheet Newspapers, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2004; Jack Sheehan, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Northampton, MA, Interlink Publishing Group, 2004; and Reeva Simon, The Middle East in Crime Fiction: Mysteries, Spy Novels, and Thrillers from 1916 to the 1980s, New York, Lilian Barber Press, 1989.
16. Elizabeth Hurd Appropriating Islam: The Islamic Other in the Consolidation of Western Modernity Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 12 : 1 (2003 pp. 25 41.
17. See Said, Orientalism.
18. See K. El Fadl (ed.), Shattered Illusions: Analyzing the War on Terrorism, Bristol, Amal Press, 2002.
19. For a discussion of these broader cultural-political narratives and the ways in which they are linked to the war on terrorism, see among others: Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counterterrorism, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005; and Stuart Croft, Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
20. The 9/11 Commission, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004, p. 54, emphasis added.
21. Ray Takeyh Nikolas Gvosdev Radical Islam: The Death of an Ideology? Middle East Policy, 11 : 4 (2004 p. 86, emphasis added.
22. Tony Blair, 'Address at the Labour Party Conference', 2 October 2001, at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tblair10-02-01.htm, accessed 28 April, 2006.
23. The noted terrorism scholar, Marc Sageman, is emblematic of this point. As the following sections clearly demonstrate, Sageman articulates many of the dominant narratives while simultaneously furnishing much of the empirical evidence used to question accepted 'knowledge' of terrorism.
24. Barak Mendelsohn Sovereignty Under Attack: The International Society Meets the Al Qaeda Network Review of International Studies, 31 (2005 p. 55.
25. Laqueur, The New Terrorism, p. 129, emphasis added.
26. Mendelsohn, 'Sovereignty Under Attack', p. 57, emphasis added.
27. Huntington, 'A Clash of Civilizations?', p. 35. Magnus Ranstorp similarly speaks about 'the traditionally violent Middle East, where religion and terrorism share a long history.' Ranstorp, 'Terrorism in the Name of Religion', p. 43.
28. Habib Malik, 'Political Islam and the Roots of Violence', in Elliott Abrams (ed.), The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, author's emphasis.
29. Reuven Paz, 'Is There an "Islamic Terrorism"?', International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) Publication, Herzilya, Israel, 7 September 1998, available at http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm? articled=46, accessed 12 October, 2001, emphasis added.
30. Ranstorp, 'Terrorism in the Name of Religion', p. 58.
31. Reuven Paz, 'Radical Islamist Terrorism: Points for Pondering', International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) Publication, Herzilya, Israel, 20 June 2001, at http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet. cfm?articleid=367, accessed 12 October, 2001.
32. Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, p. 1.
33. Ibid., p. 126, emphasis added.
34. Raphael Israeli A Manual of Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism Terrorism and Political Violence, 14 : 4 (2002 pp. 23 40.
35. Quintan Wiktorowicz A Genealogy of Radical Islam Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28 (2005 p. 75
36. Greg Austin, The Next Attack: 'Know Your Enemy and Know Yourself', London, Foreign Policy Centre, 2005, p. i.
37. Shaul Mishal Maoz Rosenthal Al Qaeda as a Dune Organization: Towards a Typology of Islamic Terrorist Organizations Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28 (2005 p. 277.
38. David Cook The Recovery of Radical Islam in the Wake of the Defeat of the Taliban Terrorism and Political Violence, 15 : 1 (2003 p. 52.
39. Ranstorp, 'Terrorism in the Name of Religion', p. 49, emphasis added.
40. Benjamin Barber, 'Democracy and Terror in the Era of Jihad vs. McWorld', in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (eds), Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 247, emphasis added.
41. Ayla Schbley Religious Terrorism, the Media, and International Islamization Terrorism: Justifying the Unjustifiable Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 27 (2004 p. 208.
42. Takeyh and Gvosdev, 'Radical Islam', p. 93, emphasis added.
43. Lewis, 'The Roots of Muslim Rage', emphasis added. Francis Fukuyama similarly suggests that 'the hatred is born out of a resentment of western success and Muslim failure'. He also maintains that 'there does seem to be something about Islam, or at least the fundamentalist versions of Islam that have been dominant in recent years, that makes Muslim societies particularly resistant to modernity'; Francis Fukuyama, 'The West Has Won', Guardian, 11 October 2001.
44. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. 264.
45. Mishal and Rosenthal, 'Al Qaeda as a Dune Organization', p. 276. Barak Mendelsohn goes even further, suggesting that 'the challenge that Al Qaeda represents is putting the survival of the system under risk'. Mendelsohn, 'Sovereignty under Attack', p. 45, emphasis added.
46. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. vii, emphasis added.
47. Daniel Pipes Who is the Enemy? Commentary, 113 : 1 (January 2002 pp. 23 4
48. The narrative of al-Qaeda's role in funding, arming, guiding and coordinating 'local jihads' into a 'global jihad' against the West is described in detail in Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 25-59.
49. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. 260.
50. Gus Martin, Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues, London, Sage, 2003, pp. 194, 198.
51. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 8, 95. It should be noted that a great many different figures are quoted by 'Islamic terrorism' authors, but all of them refer to at least 4,000 or more well-trained 'militants', 'al-Qaeda members', 'jihadists', etc.
52. A few of the numerous 'new terrorism' texts include: Hoffman, Inside Terrorism; Laqueur, The New Terrorism; Ian Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism, Santa Monica, CA, Rand Corporation Publications, 1999; Charles Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 2003; and Russell Howard and Reid Slayer (eds), Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment, Guildford, McGraw-Hill, 2003.
53. Ranstorp, 'Terrorism in the Name of Religion', p. 54, emphasis added.
54. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. xxii, emphasis added. See also, Mendelsohn, 'Sovereignty Under Attack', p. 65; and Bruce Hoffman, 'Terrorism Trends and Prospects', in Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism, p. 17.
55. Daniel Byman Al-Qaeda as an Adversary: Do We Understand Our Enemy? World Politics, 56 (2003 p. 147
56. Barber, 'Democracy and Terror', p. 246, emphasis added.
57. Tony Blair, 'PM's Press Conference', 5 August 2005, at http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page8041.asp, accessed 28 April 2006.
58. John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt and Michele Zanini, 'Networks, Netwar, and Information-Age Terrorism', in Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism, p. 56, emphasis added.
59. Frank Gregory and Paul Wilkinson, 'Riding Pillion for Tackling Terrorism is a High-Risk Policy', Security, Terrorism and the UK, Chatham House ISP/NSC Briefing Paper 05/01, July 2005, p. 2.
60. Ibid., p. 65.
61. Barber, 'Democracy and Terror', p. 249.
62. Byman, 'Al-Qaeda as an Adversary', p. 151, emphasis added.
63. Paul Pillar Terrorism Goes Global: Extremist Groups Extend their Reach Worldwide Brookings Review, 19 : 4 (2001 p. 36.
64. Austin, 'The Next Attack', p. 28.
65. Zeyno Baran Fighting the War of Ideas Foreign Affairs, 84 : 6 (2005 p. 84, emphasis added
66. Husain Haqqani Islam's Weakened Moderates Foreign Policy, 137 (2003 pp. 61 3.
67. NS interview, Patricia Hewitt, Newstatesman, 25 July 2005, p. 26.
68. This narrative is prominent in the British government's 'Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism', UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Home Office, April 2004, available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/ 2004/muslimext-uk.htm, accessed 27 June 2006.
69. Javier Jordan Luisa Box Al-Qaeda and Western Islam Terrorism and Political Violence, 16 : 1 (2004 pp. 1 17.
70. Robert Leiken Europe's Angry Muslims Foreign Affairs, 84 : 4 (2005 pp. 120 7.
71. Husain Haqqani Islam's Medieval Outposts Foreign Policy, 133 (2002 pp. 58 64.
72. In one of the most cited texts on religious terrorism, Mark Juergensmeyer states that 'the young bachelor self-martyrs in the Hamas movement. expect that the blasts that kill them will propel them to a bed in heaven where the most delicious acts of sexual consummation will be theirs for the taking', Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, p. 201. In fact, a surprising number of 'Islamic terrorism' texts, in discussing the Islamic tradition of martyrdom, mention the 'seventy black-eyed virgins' in paradise, with its implicit promise of sexual fulfilment, as being a primary motive for suicide bombings. See Wiktorowicz, 'A Genealogy of Radical Islam', p. 93.
73. John Esposito Political Islam: Beyond the Green Menace Current History, 93 : 579 (1994 pp. 19 24.
74. Guilain Denoeux The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam Middle East Policy, 9 : 2 (2002 pp. 56 81.
75. Zaheer Kazmi Discipline and Power: Interpreting Global Islam: A Review Essay Review of International Studies, 30 (2004 pp. 245 54 Yapp Islam and Islamism Middle Eastern Studies, 40 : 2 (2004 pp. 161 82.
76. See Ismail, Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism, London, I.B. Tauris, 2006.
77. Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, London, Penguin, 2003, p. 24.
78. See Ismail, Rethinking Islamist Politics.
79. Joseph Schwartz Misreading Islamist Terrorism: The "War against Terrorism" and Just-War Theory Metaphilosophy, 35 : 3 (2004 p. 278.
80. See John Esposito and John Voll, Democracy and Islam, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996; Niaz Kabuli, Democracy According to Islam, Pittsburgh, PA, Dorrance Publications, 1994; and Anthony Shahid, Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 2001.
81. World Values Survey data from 1995-2001 support this finding, discussed in Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, 'Public Opinion Among Muslims and the West', in Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just (eds), Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government, and the Public, London, Routledge, 2003. In other words, the problem would seem to be not that Islam is antithetical to democracy but that repressive regimes, often with the support of Western powers, have suppressed democratic movements.
82. Esposito, 'Political Islam', p. 23.
83. Mumtaz Ahmad, 'Islam and Democracy: The Emerging Consensus', Milli Gazette, 2 October 2002, quoted in Takeyh and Gvosdev, 'Radical Islam', p. 94. Ahmad also notes that several Islamist parties have revised their opposition to women holding political office. Similarly, Schwartz notes that when Islamist parties have gained mainstream political influence, their political stance has often evolved in strikingly moderate and pragmatic directions. Schwartz, 'Misreading Islamist Terrorism', p. 280.
84. Anna Zelkina Islam and Security in the New States of Central Asia: How Genuine is the Islamic Threat? Religion, State & Society, 27 : 3-4 (1999 pp. 355 72 Akiner The Politicisation of Islam in Postsoviet Central Asia Religion, State & Society, 31 : 2 (2003 pp. 97 122.
85. Halliday, Two Hours that Shook the World, pp. 46, 78. See also, Burke, Al-Qaeda, p. 32.
86. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 144.
87. Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, New York, Random House, 2005, p. 4.
88. Ibid, pp. 4, 17, 139, 205, 210. Pape's findings are supported by recent ethnographic research. See Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill, New York, Columbia University Press, 2005.
89. Ehud Sprinzak Rational Fanatics Foreign Policy, 120 (2000 pp. 66 73.
90. Pape, Dying to Win, p. 216. Sageman similarly suggests that 'from all the evidence, many participants joined in search of a larger cause worthy of sacrifice', Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 97.
91. Tarak Barkwai On the Pedagogy of "Small Wars" International Affairs, 80 : 1 (2004 pp. 19 37.
92. Roxanne Euban Killing (for) Politics: Jihad, Martyrdom, and Political Action Political Theory, 30 : 1 (2002 pp. 4 35.
93. Mohammed Ayoob The Future of Political Islam: The Importance of External Variables International Affairs, 81 : 5 (2005 p. 955.
94. See Osama bin Laden, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, ed. by Bruce Lawrence, trans. by James Howarth, London, Verso, 2005.
95. ' Interviews from Gaza: What Hamas Wants Middle East Policy, 9 : 4 (2002 pp. 102 15 Munson Islam, Nationalism and Resentment of Foreign Domination Middle East Policy, 10 : 2 (2003 pp. 40 53.
96. Thomas Copeland Is the New Terrorism Really New? An Analysis of the New Paradigm for Terrorism Journal of Conflict Studies, 21 : 2 (2001 pp. 91 105 Duyvesteyn How New is the New Terrorism? Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 27 : 5 (2004 pp. 439 54 Spencer Questioning the Concept of "New Terrorism" Peace, Conflict & Development, 8 (2006 pp. 1 33
97. Mark Sedgwick Al-Qaeda and the Nature of Religious Terrorism Terrorism and Political Violence, 16 : 4 (2004 pp. 795 814.
98. Quintan Wiktorowicz John Kaltner Killing in the Name of Islam: Al-Qaeda's Justification for September 11 Middle East Policy, 10 : 2 (2003 pp. 76 92.
99. Ehud Sprinzak The Great Superterrorism Scare Foreign Policy, 112 (1998 pp. 110 24.
100. See Brian Jenkins, 'Will Terrorists go Nuclear? A Reappraisal', in Harvey Kushner (ed.), The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium, London, Sage, 1998.
101. Thomas Hegghammer Global Jihadism after the Iraq War Middle East Journal, 60 : 1 (2006 pp. 11 22.
102. ' The Forum: Alternative Views of the Terrorist Threat International Studies Review, 7 (2005 p. 677.
103. See Winkler, In the Name of Terrorism and Croft, Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror.
104. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, revised edn, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1998.
105. Hurd, 'Appropriating Islam', pp. 26-7. See also Euban, 'Killing (for) Politics', p. 8.
106. Yee, 'The Causal Effects of Ideas on Politics', p. 97.
107. Jeroen Gunning points out that the 'secular prejudice' - the attitude whereby any expression of religiosity is treated a priori as irrational and dangerous - has underpinned a great part of the social scientific research on social movements, and in particular, studies of Islamist movements. See Jeroen Gunning, Hamas in Politics: Representation, Religion, Violence, London, Hurst, forthcoming, 2007.
108. See Winkler, In the Name of Terrorism.
109. These findings came from a Pew Research Center poll, reported in 'Survey Highlights Islam-West Rift', available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/ 5110364.stm, accessed 27 June 2006. Other polls show that between 48 and 66 per cent of British Muslims feel that relations between Muslims and non-Muslims had deteriorated since 11 September 2001. See 'Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism'.
110. The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia released a major report on 18 December 2006 entitled, 'Muslims in the European Union: Discrimination and Islamophobia', which details the nature and extent of the phenomenon in the EU. The report is available at http://eumc.europa.eu/eumc/ index.php.
111. Scotland Yard, for example, published figures showing a 600 per cent increase in faith-hate crimes in the period immediately following the London bombings. See Alan Cowell, 'Faith-Hate on Rise in UK', International Herald Tribune, 4 August 2005.
112. See the poll data in: David Luban, 'Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb', in Karen Greenberg (ed.), The Torture Debate in America, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 35; Alisa Solomon, 'The Case Against Torture: A New U.S. Threat to Human Rights', Village Voice, 28 November-4 December 2001, available at http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0148,fsolomon, 30292,1.html, accessed 26 March 2006; David Morris and Gary Langer, 'Terror Suspect Treatment: Most Americans Oppose Torture Techniques', ABC News, available at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Polls/torture_poll_040527.html, accessed 24 March 2006; and Will Lester, 'Poll Finds Support for the Use of Torture in War on Terror', Washington Times, available at http:// washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20051206-114042-3526r, accessed 24 March 2006.
113. This point is made in Richard Jackson, 'Language, Policy and the Construction of a Torture Culture in the War on Terrorism', Review of International Studies (forthcoming, October 2007).
114. Esposito, 'Political Islam', p. 23.
115. The EU recently announced that as a result of long consultations with academic experts, it plans to review expressions such as 'Islamic terrorism', 'Islamist terrorism', 'fundamentalism' and 'jihadi' and expel them from the next edition of its dictionary - largely for the reasons expressed in this article. See 'EU Removes "Islamic Terrorism" from its Dictionary', Zaman Online, 12 April, 2006, available at http://www.zaman.com/?bl= international&alt=&hn=31952, accessed 22 May 2006. Similarly, an internal Foreign Office-Home Office draft report on countering Islamic extremism in Britain recognized that 'a change of language' was required. The report noted, for example, that 'the term "Islamic fundamentalism" is unhelpful and should be avoided, because some perfectly moderate Muslims are likely to perceive it as a negative comment on their own approach to their faith.' See 'Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism'.