Abstract
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is an Islamic revolutionary group that promises to deliver not only the Muslim world but the entire modern world from what it interprets as a West-made “crisis situation.” For ISIS, this crisis-saturated world is causing extraordinary Muslim suffering and ravaging their human dignity. Drawing on Islamic scripture and numerous other sources, including Muslim historiography, ISIS has formulated a subjective ontological and epistemological cosmos in which it is the supreme redeemer. ISIS claims it will rid the Western-framed modern world of its crises through waging a global jihad; a war of the sword. To accomplish its mission, ISIS has used language in which it has reconceptualised and reconfigured human dignity and jihad as a powerful recruiting tool. As such, it has turned jihad into a political weapon with literal application to wage violent war on its enemies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
By crisis, I mean Islam’s (represented by the ulemic community) failure to resolve various socio-economic, cultural, religious, and political issues facing Muslims in their everyday living; Muslim countries’ comparatively poor performance in social, economic, and political spheres, and general moral and ethical deficiencies in Muslim societies.
- 2.
In his work, Maududi refers to secular modernity as jahiliyyah, viewing modernity as the “new jahiliyyah” (see Maududi 1960). Drawing on Maududi’s conception of jahiliyyah, Sayyid Qutb articulates jahiliyyah as a situation in which humans dominate humans as opposed to their submission to God (see Qutb 1964).
- 3.
A consultative committee.
- 4.
The term Kharijite is linked to the Arabic word Khawarij or al-Khawarij, which means “the Outsiders.” The Khawarij are members of a group or an early Islamic sect that emerged during the reign of Islam’s fourth caliph —Ali—in the first century of Islam. The Khawarij were a breakaway group from the Shi’i collectivity who revolted against the authority of the Rashidun Caliph Ali after he was forced to agree to arbitration by umpires. Khawarij believed the arbitration repudiated the Qur’anic dictum regarding the matter, withdrew their support for Ali, and started a separate campaign under the leadership of Ibn Wahb. A Khariji later assassinated Ali, and for many hundreds of years, the Khawarij were a source of insurrection against the Umayyad and Abbasid empires. Members of Islamic State have often been described as neo-Kharijites or modern-age Kharijites because of their ideological semblance with that of original Kharijites in the first century of Islam (Nance 2016).
- 5.
Objectivation is the transformation or transfiguration of a concept or abstraction into an object.
- 6.
Dabiq, particularly in the West, is seen as an ISIS propaganda magazine.
- 7.
When I say ISIS gives jihad and human dignity distinct meanings, I am not saying these meanings are unique to ISIS. In fact, meanings given by ISIS overlap with meanings given by other Muslim movements, but ISIS seems to believe these meanings are unique to it and thus claim ownership.
- 8.
Secondary socialisation is the internalisation of institutional or institution-based “sub-worlds’.” Secondary socialisation requires the acquisition of role-specific vocabularies, which means, for one thing, the internalisation of semantic fields structuring routine interpretations and conduct within an institutional area (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 158).
References
Akyol, Mustafa. 2014. Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. Istanbul: Dogan Kitap.
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Bradshaw-Camball, Patricia. 1989. The Implications of Multiple Perspectives on Power for Organization Development. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 25 (1): 31–44.
Chiu, Chi-yue, Robert Krauss, and Ivy Lau. 1998. Some Cognitive Consequences of Communication. In Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication, ed. Susan R. Fussell and Roger J. Kreuz, 259–278. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Cockburn, Patricia. 2014. Islamic State Has 200,000 Fighters Claims Kurdistan Leader. The Independent, November 16. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-with-isis-islamic-militants-have-army-of-200000-claims-kurdish-leader-9863418.html. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Cojocaru, Stefan, Constantin Bragaru, and Oana Maria Ciuchi. 2012. The Role of Language in Constructing Social Realities: The Appreciative Inquiry and the Reconstruction of Organisational Ideology. Revista de Cercetare si Interventie Sociala 36: 31–43.
Cook, David. 2015. Understanding Jihad. Oakland: University of California Press.
Dabiq. 2015. Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You. Dabiq 15: 30–33.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1974. Course in General Linguistics. London: Fontana.
Donner, Fred. 1991. The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War. In Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions, ed. John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, 31–69. New York: Greenwood Press.
Fatoohi, Louay. 2004. Jihad in the Quran. Kuala Lumpur: A.S. Noordeen.
Gerges, Fawaz. 2016. A History of ISIS. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hamdy, Sherine. 2012. Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hosking, Dian Marie, and Andy Bass. 2001. Constructing Changes in Relational Processes: Introducing a Social Constructionist Approach to Change Work. Career Development International 6 (7): 348–360.
Kamali, Muhammad Hashim. 1993. Fundamental Rights of the Individual: An Analysis of Haqq (Right) in Islamic Law. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 10 (3): 340–366.
Kant, Immanuel. 2004. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. J.M.D. Meiklejohn. New York: Dover Publications Inc.
Kashima, Yoshihisa, Emiko Kashima, Uichol Kim, and Michele Gelfand. 2006. Describing the Social World: How Is a Person, a Group, and a Relationship Described in the East and the West. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42: 388–396.
Khalfaoui, Hamdi. 2015. Islam and Economic Growth. International Journal of Social Science Studies 3 (6): 62–69.
Maududi, Sayyid. 1960. Political Theory of Islam. Lahore: Islamic Publications.
McNamee, Sheila, and Kenneth Gergen, eds. 1999. Relational Responsibility: Resources for Sustainable Dialogue. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Michael, Kobi, and Udi Dekel. 2014. ISIS Success in Iraq and Syria: Strategic Ramifications. INSS Insight, 563. http://www.inss.org.il/publication/isis-success-in-iraq-and-syria-strategic-ramifications/. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Munir, Muhammad. 2012. Who Can Declare Jihad? Research Papers, Human Rights Conflict Prevention Centre XII (1–2): 1279–1294.
Nance, Malcom. 2016. Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.
Qutb, Sayyid. 1964. Milestones. Chicago: Kazi Publications.
Rahman, Fazlur. 2002. Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Semin, Gün R. 2000. Agenda 2000—Communication: Language as an Implementational Device for Cognition. European Journal of Social Psychology 30: 595–612.
Shahrour, Muhammad. 2008. Tajfif Manabi al-Irhab [Draining the Sources of Terrorism]. Damascus: al-Ahali.
Tasgin, Serkan, and Taner Cam. 2016. Reasons for Terrorism in the Middle East. Middle East Review of Public Administration 2 (1): 1–21.
Unal, Ali. 2008. The Qur’an with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English. Clifton: Tughra Books.
United Nations. 1997. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The International Journal of Human Rights 1 (1): 1–4.
Zelin, Aaron. 2014. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Has a Consumer Protection Office: A Guide to How the Militant Group Overrunning Iraq Wins Hearts and Minds. The Atlantic, June 13. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/the-isis-guide-to-building-an-islamic-state/372769/. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ali, J.A. (2019). Social Construction of Jihad and Human Dignity in the Language of ISIS. In: Mansouri, F., Keskin, Z. (eds) Contesting the Theological Foundations of Islamism and Violent Extremism. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02719-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02719-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02718-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02719-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)