Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law

Object of the project

In terrorist conflicts the adverse actors utilize violence as a means to assert their antagonizing views about the ideal social order and the sovereignty of power. Both actors construe a corresponding narrative of how the application of violence is legitimate, functional, and necessary. This research project investigates the narrative that promotes jihadi violence and jihadi terrorism.

Jihadism is an illustrative case of contemporary terrorism. It can be described as a recent form of (Sunni) Islamic fundamentalism that opposes secular influences through violent activism (namely jihad). Jihadi violence can be defined as physical harm against persons committed by actors who thereby execute the doctrine of jihad (according to the heterodox interpretation of jihadism). In other words, jihadi violence is violence motivated through and inspired by the ideology of jihadism. This definition is subjective because it is characterized by motivation rather than by clear-cut behavioral criteria – violence is considered jihadi when the actor claims it to be so. However, this subjectivity is intrinsic to jihadi violence: While orthodox Muslims condemn most aspects of jihadism as heretic, jihadists claim to be the guardians of true Islam.

Despite all efforts to counter jihadi terrorism it is difficult assess whether the global jihadi conflict is a volatile phenomenon in decline, or whether it will sustain, harden, intensify and thereby coin the future of foreign affairs, domestic security and social organization like other global conflicts did before.

Method of the study

The study analyses public statements of al-Qaeda and affiliated groups with focus on the question: “What do jihadi discourses say about motivation (cause), justification, and expected outcome/utility (functionality) of violent action?” In a second step the doctrine of jihadism is compared with its actual implementation in regional conflicts, by analyzing claims of responsibility for terrorist/military operations.

The empirical material (video/audio speeches, communiqués and statements of AQ and affiliated groups) is sampled from the archive of the SITE Intelligence Group, a commercial intelligence provider that closely monitors various kinds of media from the jihadi movement. Through inductive content analysis (using the software MAXQDA) open and latent patterns in the data shall be identified and described.

Status of the project

Literature from Islamic and oriental studies, anthropology, criminology and terrorist studies has been reviewed in order to draw a descriptive profile of jihadism and to clarify the term. Jihadism can be characterized and defined in regard to three constitutive dimensions (see figure): The first is a set of religious, ideological and political attitudes which distinguishes jihadi Salafism from other forms of Islamic activism (e.g. Islamism, Islamic nationalism, purist Salafism). The second dimension is the judicial discourse about the doctrine of jihad (as stipulated in Islamic international law [siyar]). From this heterodox interpretation derives the movement’s modus operandi (third dimension) that has no precedence in the history of jihad warfare.

Likewise, an analytical definition of terrorism has been drafted by compiling relevant contributions from the literature on the topic. Following Black (2004) terrorism is understood as social control. Additionally the working definition considers that terrorism is it is neither genuine crime nor genuine military aggression.

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