Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity

by Faisal Devji

What are the motives behind Osama bin Laden's and Al-Qaeda's jihad against America and the West? Innumerable attempts have been made in recent years to explain that mysterious worldview. In Landscapes of the Jihad, Faisal Devji focuses on the ethical content of this jihad as opposed to its purported political intent. Al-Qaeda differs radically from such groups as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, which aim to establish fundamentalist Islamic states. In fact, Devji contends, Al-Qaeda, with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action, actually has more in common with multinational corporations, antiglobalization activists, and environmentalist and social justice organizations. Bin Laden and his lieutenants view their cause as a response to the oppressive conditions faced by the Muslim world rather than an Islamist attempt to build states.

Al-Qaeda culls diverse symbols and fragments from Islam's past in order to legitimize its global war against the "metaphysical evil" emanating from the West. The most salient example of this assemblage, Devji argues, is the concept of jihad itself, which Al-Qaeda defines as an "individual duty" incumbent on all Muslims, like prayer. Although medieval Islamic thought provides precedent for this interpretation, Al-Qaeda has deftly separated the stipulation from its institutional moorings and turned jihad into a weapon of spiritual conflict.

Al-Qaeda and its jihad, Devji suggests, are only the most visible manifestations of wider changes in the Muslim world. Such changes include the fragmentation of traditional as well as fundamentalist forms of authority. In the author's view, Al-Qaeda represents a new way of organizing Muslim belief and practice within a global landscape and does not require ideological or institutional unity.

Offering a compelling explanation for the central purpose of Al-Qaeda's jihad against the West, the meaning of its strategies and tactics, and its moral and aesthetic dimensions, Landscapes of the Jihad is at once a sophisticated work of historical and cultural analysis and an invaluable guide to the world's most prominent terrorist movement.

Genres: History, Religion, Islam, Politics, Nonfiction, Middle East

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2005

Reviews

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devji writes about 'the Jihad' in this refreshing take, though much of the framework is reminiscent of Oliver Roy's careful and imaginative mapping of globalised Islam. Devji challenges contemporary views of the Jihad as an order/state building project and posits that much like environmentalist and anti-globalisation movements, the Jihad is an ethical action that seeks to break free from the straitjacket of politics which is dominated by the discourses of citizenship, rights, and territory. To do so, Devji embarks on an interpretivist methodology which may trouble the empiricism of many security analysts, although this isn't troubling the least if one buys into his theory, that the 'jihad' situated radically outside the conveniences and conceptions of contemporary politics. After all, rational-choice empiricism cannot account for a politics without 'intentionality', a result of globalisation much more than a result of Islam.

Devji's postulations will face many rebuke and rebuttals, given that the book was written when the Jihad was only an enterprise of Al-Qaeda's as compared to how it has branched off and seeps into the local politics of multiple regions, heralded by different authors with variegated ambitions, even if they continue to pander to pan-Muslim visions. One can foresee at least two objections to Devji's thesis. The first is that it may have given too many thought and credit to the Jihad's claim to 'absolute humanity'. Thus far, there remains very few evidence that like global environmentalism, the 'Jihad' is fashioned as a call for all humanity (though that is the premise of the faith) as it continues to struggle, communicate, and rationalise like a minority, echoing discourses of the global south and communism rather than the transcendence seen in accelerationist and singularity debates. The atavism and revanchism that trickles out of the Jihad’s very modern carapace still betray its limitations as a self-referencing discourse, driving it closer to forms and modalities of group identity politics instead of anything revolutionary. For ethics is never about group justice, it is just about Justice.

Second, the eruption of the ISIS phenomenon also challenges many of Devji's ideas. The focus on state-building by the transnational terrorist group reifies the teleology that is present in jihadist discourses instead of shedding it, contrary to Devji’s formulation in which martyrdom is to be conceived as a moment of ‘absolute humanity, responsibility and freedom as a self-contained act shorn of all teleology’. Also, it remains to be seen if the Jihad is as 'secular' (in the sense that it is made by the 'Death of God' ethos) as Devji may claim with Graeme Wood's argument that Islamic eschatology forms the nexus of ISIS’s ideology. In other words, ISIS is driven by a politics of intentionality, either through building a caliphate for the living, or to die so that the prophetic battle of the End of Times could be realised.

Even so, this does not diminish Devji’s contribution in this bold and thought-provoking book. Critiques of it will inadvertently take the shape of what the book criticises, that, in trying to classify and specify the jihad, we place it within a taxonomy that limits the understanding of violence as well as that of politics. Perhaps it is a mistake to think that we can pinpoint the Jihad in terms precise and forms solidified. Perhaps the best way to think of the Jihad, close to twenty years now after September 11, is not about what its members want, or what its ideology demands, but the landscape that produces it and the one it produces. This is how the study of the jihad can be most productive, for it interrogates an ‘invisible world of ethical, sexual, aesthetic, and other forms of behaviour’, driving the study of jihad back to its human roots instead of trying to trace its sacred provenance. Maybe the greatest irony of the Jihad is that it can only happen after the death of God, as Devji cleverly prescribes.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've only read three chapters and may not get to the rest of it soon but Devji's analysis is so smart and *so* literary for a theology scholar. He exploded a lot of my misconceptions about the people and events surrounding 9/11, specifically in terms of the role of the media and the extent to which Islamic extremists are also influenced by mediated representations.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned reading in a 9/11 History course. Devji's overall argument, that modern jihadists are operating in a fundamentally globalist society, whose methods and goals are divorced from the former national and territorial forms of past groups, is well-argued and convincing. Further considerations of martyrdom as increasingly valued by these groups in a global society documented and presented through mass media, are also valuable additions to scholarship on terrorism and neofundamentalism in the first decade of the 2000's.

I found that Devji's writing was rather repetitive, and definitely did not enjoy the process of reading the book, even if I found the information to be thought-provoking. I also felt that sections about philosophy and internal ethical logics, while occasionally illuminating, were broadly less interesting and compelling than more historical sections - though it's very possible that's a result of personal preference rather than authorial weakness. I also wish the author spent more time considering how narratives of globalism intersected with narratives of antisemitism. While he addressed this topic, I felt like more could have been done to investigate the relationship between them.

This is a valuable work for those interested in understanding modern terror and neofundamentalism, as well as those interested in studies of identity and globalism. For that reason, I would highly recommend this to my friend Tom, whose expertise is not in global terror but would glean a lot from Devji's ideas about identity and actions.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very hard to udnerstand book, but when I did understand it I was floored. I had to look up a few words along the way, and I think I could never do the concepts justice. If only this was written on a simpler level, his jargon was too philosophical. It was worth my plowing through it for the few ideas I did understand that I could use in my dissertation.

[Nick Black]

Saw in a review of Devji's latest book, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity. Looks pretty interesting.