ACADEMIC ARTICLES by Mohammed M Hafez
The Routledge Companion to Terrorism Studies: New Perspectives and Topics, 2024
Islamist political violence is not a monolithic phenomenon. The Islamist movement is fragmented i... more Islamist political violence is not a monolithic phenomenon. The Islamist movement is fragmented into multiple factions, ranging from apolitical preachers and civic activists to political dissidents and violent extremists. Even Islamists who embrace violence are divided into four distinct categories. Some are Revolutionary Islamists, who seek to overthrow
their secular regimes and establish Islamic states in their place. They aim to take state power in order to recast the polity as an Islamic utopia, where laws and social mores are governed completely by Islamic laws and traditions. Transnational jihadists extend the radical ethos of the revolutionaries beyond national borders and attack Western governments and their citizens to compel those states to abandon support for secular regimes in the Muslim world. Some of these global jihadists aspire to establish an Islamic empire---a Caliphate—that cuts across state boundaries, thus abrogating the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty. Islamic Nationalists, by contrast, make territorial claims that are limited in scope. They harness the narrative of defensive jihad to fight foreign occupations of their homelands, make irredentist claims on territories they consider historically theirs, or demand secession from an existing state. Lastly, Sectarian Islamists direct their violence against Muslims from another denomination because they deem them to be insufficiently pure, outright heretical, or a threat to their sect. Sectarian Islamists also direct their violence against other religious communities during intercommunal rivalries. Each form of Islamist political violence has an underlying motivation, a particular targeting portfolio, and a
number of ideological justifications. All four strands of Islamist political violence exist today, sometimes in the same conflict zone. Additionally, some groups are hybrids that combine two or more strands of violent Islamism, or sometimes form alliances with one another, further complicating the classification of this diverse and fractionalized movement. Understanding this diversity is necessary to formulating measured responses to curtail their violence and avoid radicalizing future generations of Muslims.
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2024
Civil Conflicts are characterized by multiple armed groups embracing different primary identities... more Civil Conflicts are characterized by multiple armed groups embracing different primary identities, interests, and ideologies. As conflict conditions evolve, adverse shifts in military capabilities and political standing compel armed groups to seek new allies to halt their decline in power. Instrumentalists assume that ideology is fairly malleable and can shift dramatically to forge new alliances when power considerations demand it, while identity-based theories assume that ideologies are “sticky” and cannot easily accommodate alliances with ideological rivals even under adverse conflict conditions. We attempt to bridge the gap between these two perspectives by proposing a theory in which the distinction between uniform threats and wedge threats helps predict the composition of alliances among ideologically disparate armed groups. When an external threat uniformly challenges the ideological preferences of disparate factions, we anticipate them to form a broad rebel coalition of heterogenous organizations that cooperate despite their ideological differences. Conversely, a wedge threat strains the ideological preferences of some groups more than others, forcing
groups to make tradeoffs between alliance partners and ideology, thereby narrowing the ideological diversity of alliances. Methodologically, we apply a novel network approach to insurgent factional realignments in Iraq from 2003 to 2009. This case demonstrates that concern for declining organizational power does not completely override ideological considerations. Iraqi rebel groups that needed new allies to remedy their diminishing power formed alliances with armed factions that shared their highest ideological priorities while giving up other ideological demands that would have hindered cooperation with prospective allies.
Handbook of Middle East Politics, 2023
The Middle East regional system presents an interesting paradox. From its point of origins in the... more The Middle East regional system presents an interesting paradox. From its point of origins in the 1920s to the present, Middle Eastern states have been mired in crises, anti-colonial struggles, military coups, civil wars, interstate conflicts, and mass revolutions. Yet, despite all this instability, the Sykes-Picot-inspired borders formed by imperial powers following World War I have remained essentially the same. This paradox is even more puzzling because the two major transnational ideological movements in the twentieth century—pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism—were bent on fundamentally changing the nature and boundaries of Middle Eastern states. Both inspired mass devotion that crystalized into political parties, revolutionary movements, and state governments. Yet, both pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism ultimately failed to fundamentally remake the Middle East state structure. This failure of ideologically motivated movements to affect change can be explained in
large part by two factors: factional fragmentation and external state intervention. Both movements suffered from internal fragmentation into competing factions, which enabled their local detractors to benefit from their factionalism and infighting. And both pan-Arab nationalists and pan-Islamists have had to contend with western states opposing their ideological visions and supporting their local rivals every step of the way. As a result, the map of the Middle East remains more or less that same as it was founded a century ago.
Routledge Handbook on Ideology in International Relations, 2022
Scholars of civil conflicts are quick to dismiss the importance of ideology in civil wars. In thi... more Scholars of civil conflicts are quick to dismiss the importance of ideology in civil wars. In this survey of emerging empirical research, we argue that ideology is a framing mechanism that articulates the complexity of national crises and collective grievances into simple narratives about ingroups and outgroups, alternative sociopolitical institutions, and belonging to the state. We call these three dimensions of ideology conflict framing, ideal polity, and territorial aspirations. Conflict framing helps establish a common understanding of the social categories in conflict, which in turn defines who is the main enemy and who are possible allies in the civil war. Ideal polity envisions the desired post-conflict order and defines who qualifies as a legitimate participant in this political system. Territorial aspirations specify the physical boundaries of this desired state, which can range from maintaining the territorial integrity of the country to abrogating its existing borders through secessionism or irredentism. These three components of ideology help conceptualize the degree of political homophily between armed actors and incumbent regimes; rebel organizations and their factional counterparts; and combatants and their external state sponsors. Political homophily is an important microfoundation for ideology in collective action. It helps structure social networks prior to conflict onset, and shapes the composition of conflict networks during civil wars. We illustrate how our disaggregation of ideology into three components can help explain key dynamics in civil war, such as legitimating violence, factional fragmentation, rebel alliances, and external sponsorship-.
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2022
How do armed groups consolidate power in conflict landscapes packed with rival factions, paramili... more How do armed groups consolidate power in conflict landscapes packed with rival factions, paramilitary militias, and local warlords? This special issue publication in the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism illustrates three pathways to armed group consolidation: cooperative, competitive, and coercive. We explore several hypotheses revolving around territorial control, permeability of group boundaries, and the role of external state sponsorship. We cover eight case studies: Taliban during the 1990s; Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD); Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF); People's Protection Units (PDY/YPG); Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq; the Islamic State movement; and Russian-Speaking militias in Eastern Ukraine. Our contribution demonstrated how nonstate armed actors can overcome fragmentation to concentrate power in multiparty civil conflicts.
ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF POLITICAL ISLAM, Second edition, 2021
Jihadi Salafism is one of the deadliest ideologies of our times. Adherents of this puritanical Is... more Jihadi Salafism is one of the deadliest ideologies of our times. Adherents of this puritanical Islamist movement have grown in size, strength, and geographical expanse. Their violence has far outstripped rival Islamist factions because of their innovative tactics, embrace of suicide bombings, and mobilization of thousands of foreign fighters to conflict zones. This chapter traces the evolution of Jihadi Salafism since the 1990s, explains its core religious and ideological precepts, and highlights the recent trends of fragmentation and infighting within the Jihadi Salafist faction. At its point of origins, Jihadi Salafism represented a clear alternative to prevailing forms of Islamism, principally the accommodationist Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, the non-violent activism of Salafist preachers, and the quietism of Salafist scholars. It rejected any form of political Islam that does not adhere to its Salafist paradigm and questioned the efficacy, and ultimately the legitimacy, of Salafists that did not embrace jihad in practice. Today, Jihadi Salafism is no longer a coherent signifier of the movement it presumes to describe. Islamists that embrace both jihad and Salafism exhibit important religious, ideological, strategic, and tactical differences. These divisions require us to introduce a more nuanced typology of Salafism, one that accounts for its new strand of sectarian and fratricidal extremism.
CTC Sentinel, 2020
The civil war raging between global jihadis is intensifying. Despite the shared ideological commi... more The civil war raging between global jihadis is intensifying. Despite the shared ideological commitments and mutual state adversaries of al-Qa`ida and the Islamic State, these dueling factions have failed to overcome the challenge of fragmentation under the stress of conflict and territorial retreat. Rather than close ranks, these salafi-jihadis have accelerated their fratricidal wars in West Africa, Yemen, and Afghanistan. They turned their attention away from near and far enemies and instead prioritized fighting the nearest enemy of all—each other. A recent Islamic State documentary, To Be Absolved Before Your Lord, released by its Yemeni branch offers the clearest articulation of the differences that divide these two factions. The Islamic State represents an exclusive, uncompromising, and puritanical vision of jihadism, while al-Qa`ida has rebranded jihadism as an inclusive, pragmatic, and populist pan-Islamist movement. Five fundamental disagreements emerged from the documentary over establishing an ‘Islamic’ state, applying ‘Islamic’ law, rejecting populism, embracing sectarianism, and defending puritanism.
Journal of Peace Research, 2019
Violent conflict among rebels is a common feature of civil wars and insurgencies. Yet, not all re... more Violent conflict among rebels is a common feature of civil wars and insurgencies. Yet, not all rebel groups are equally prone to such infighting. While previous research has focused on the systemic causes of violent conflict within rebel movements, this article explores the factors that affect the risk of conflict between pairs of rebel groups. We generate hypotheses concerning how differences in power, ideology, and state sponsors between rebel groups impact their propensity to clash and test them using data from the Syrian civil war. The data, drawn from hundreds of infighting claims made by rebel groups on social media, are used to construct a network of conflictual ties among 30 rebel groups. The relationship between the observed network structure and the independent variables is evaluated using network analysis metrics and methods. We find strong evidence that ideologically distant groups have a higher propensity for infighting than ideologically proximate ones. We also find support for power asymmetry, meaning that pairs of groups of disparate size are at greater risk of infighting than pairs of equal strength. No support was found for the proposition that sharing state sponsors mitigates rebels’ propensity for infighting. Our results provide an important corrective to prevailing theory, which discounts the role of ideology in militant factional dynamics within fragmented conflicts.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2019
When rebels make alliances, what informs their choice of allies? Civil wars are rarely simple con... more When rebels make alliances, what informs their choice of allies? Civil wars are rarely simple contests between rebels and incumbent regimes. Rather, rival militant networks provide the context in which these fragmented conflicts unfold. Alliances that emerge within this competitive landscape have the power to alter conflict trajectories and shape their outcomes. Yet patterns of interrebel cooperation are understudied. The existing scholarship on rebel alliances focuses on why rebels cooperate, but little attention is given to the composition of those alliances: with whom rebels cooperate. We explore how power, ideology, and state sponsorship can shape alliance choices in multiparty civil wars. Employing network analysis and an original data set of tactical cooperation among Syrian rebels, we find compelling evidence that ideological homophily is a primary driver of rebel collaboration. Our findings contribute to an emerging literature that reasserts the role of ideology in conflict processes.
Terrorism and Political Violence, 2017
Why do rebels kill each other? When confronting a formidable regime, rebels often descend into wa... more Why do rebels kill each other? When confronting a formidable regime, rebels often descend into warring factionalism rather than forge unity across their ranks to reap the advantages of cooperation. This article tackles the puzzle of inter-rebel fratricide. It explores power and resource competition arguments, and contrasts them with ideological mechanisms that can drive inter-rebel violence. It argues that ideological extremity is central to rebel fratricide. Rebel organizations with common ideological origins can still compete with each other based on their degree of centrism and extremism, making them ideologically distant. This proximity-distance paradox makes their cohabitation mutually threatening. Ideological challengers from the same family tree are particularly threatening to one’s group cohesion, and if successful, guarantee one’s political marginalization within the broader movement. Extremist groups are likely to respond to these threats with fratricide, while ideologically centrist ones will rely on other strategies such as balancing, outbidding, or defecting to manage their rivalries. Algeria’s civil war, 1992-2002, is a plausibility probe case study that illustrates these causal mechanisms. This study contributes to a burgeoning literature on the role of ideology in armed civil conflicts.
Journal of Religion and Violence, 2019
Islamists in civil wars often end up fighting and killing each other despite having mutual state ... more Islamists in civil wars often end up fighting and killing each other despite having mutual state adversaries and shared normative commitments. This reality raises an intriguing puzzle. How can Islamists justify fratricidal practices given the ubiquity of Quranic scripture and prophetic traditions that prevail upon them to unite and refrain from infighting. This article explores two religious narratives that rationalize violent infighting between Islamist factions. The Victorious Sect narrative depicts rival Islamist factions as insufficiently Islamic by harboring democracy and nationalism in their ideological platforms. These deviations from Salafist orthodoxy are proof of their ineligibility to lead the Islamist movement. The other narrative depicts rival factions as modern day Kharijites or Muslim extremists that must be driven out of the Islamist movement because they undermine its legitimacy and shed inviolable blood. These narratives are important because they rationalize the controversial act of Islamists killing one another in the crucible of civil wars.
Middle East Policy, 2018
The rapid and complete collapse of the Islamic State is the latest reminder that fratricidal jiha... more The rapid and complete collapse of the Islamic State is the latest reminder that fratricidal jihadis are destined to lose. Over the last three decades, jihadis have consecutively lost their civil wars in Algeria, Iraq and Syria because of three strategic errors. They portray their political conflicts as religious wars between Islam and impiety, forcing otherwise neutral parties to choose between repressive autocrats or ardent fanatics. Furthermore, they pursue transformational goals that are too ambitious for other rebel groups with limited political objectives, producing violent ruptures between doctrinaire jihadis and pragmatic Islamists. Lastly, their indiscriminate violence flips their supporters into proponents of law and order, allowing vulnerable regimes to extricate themselves from their legitimacy crises. Worst still, despite clarion warnings from seasoned veterans, jihadis appear incapable of internalizing lessons from their past failures. Their puritanical ideology is a major obstacle to learning and adapting in the crucible of civil wars. These inherent weaknesses offer the international community strategic lessons for fighting future iterations of the Islamic State.
Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide (Oxford University Press), 2018
Salafist Jihadists circumvent the Islamic prohibition against self-destruction in order to legiti... more Salafist Jihadists circumvent the Islamic prohibition against self-destruction in order to legitimize suicide attacks around the globe. They do so by departing from their strict constructionist orientation to textual authority, and instead rely on ta'wil (allegorical interpretation) to make the case for the permissibility of suicide as martyrdom. Surprisingly, this blatant contradiction between their hyper-textual method (manhaj) and their innovative construal of scripture is rarely pointed out. Jihadists have elevated their interpretive capacity of imprecise scripture (ayat mutashabihat) above settled doctrine based on clear verses (ayat muhkamat) and absolute rulings (ahkam qat'iya).
The Ibrahim brothers behind the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks in Sri Lanka raise an intrigui... more The Ibrahim brothers behind the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks in Sri Lanka raise an intriguing puzzle: why do brothers become terrorists? This earlier piece deals with the phenomenon of radicalization among family members. It argues that tightening security environments are encouraging jihadis to turn increasingly to the family unit for recruits. This phenomenon complicates efforts to detect, monitor, and prevent violent radicalization. Kinship recruitment, which is difficult for security agencies to observe, is facilitated by several psychological mechanisms that bind individuals together on the path to extremism. Importantly, it deters ambivalent recruits from defecting to the authorities for fear of damaging their own valued relationships. The reliance on kinship recruitment is supplemented by greater use of social media and an emphasis on recruiting Islamic converts and women, which suggests that jihadis are adjusting their mobilization patterns to avoid detection based on previous, well-known strategies for radicalization.
Asian Journal of Social Science, 2010
Discusses the symbolism of martyrdom in Palestinian suicide attacks.
Terrorism and Political Violence, 2007
ISIS represents a new level of radicalization in Islamism, and introduces the dimension of sectar... more ISIS represents a new level of radicalization in Islamism, and introduces the dimension of sectarianism in Islamist movements. This organization has its roots in the Iraqi insurgency and the sectarian strategy of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its violence is strategically calculated to produce failed states in the region where violent extremists and irreconcilable Ba'athists can survive, grow, and thrive. ISIS is enabled by Iraqi and Syrian insurgents, foreign fighters, transnational extremist networks, and regional powers interested in competing with their adversaries through proxy wars.
This book sheds light on the origins of the strategy and ideology of the Islamic State, its sectarian warfare, and extremist narratives rooted in its jihadi-Salafi worldview.
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2015
Why and how do individuals residing in relatively peaceful and affluent western societies come to... more Why and how do individuals residing in relatively peaceful and affluent western societies come to embrace extremist ideologies that emanate from distant places? We summarize the most recent empirical literature on the causes and dynamics of radicalization, and evaluate the state of the art in the study of Islamist homegrown extremism in the West. We propose a theoretical synthesis based on four factors that come together to produce violent radicalization: personal and collective grievances, networks and interpersonal ties, political and religious ideologies, and enabling environments and support structures. We propose adopting a “puzzle” metaphor that represents a multifactor and contextualized approach to understanding how ordinary individuals transform into violent extremists. We concluded with three recommendations to strengthen the empirical foundations of radicalization studies.
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ACADEMIC ARTICLES by Mohammed M Hafez
their secular regimes and establish Islamic states in their place. They aim to take state power in order to recast the polity as an Islamic utopia, where laws and social mores are governed completely by Islamic laws and traditions. Transnational jihadists extend the radical ethos of the revolutionaries beyond national borders and attack Western governments and their citizens to compel those states to abandon support for secular regimes in the Muslim world. Some of these global jihadists aspire to establish an Islamic empire---a Caliphate—that cuts across state boundaries, thus abrogating the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty. Islamic Nationalists, by contrast, make territorial claims that are limited in scope. They harness the narrative of defensive jihad to fight foreign occupations of their homelands, make irredentist claims on territories they consider historically theirs, or demand secession from an existing state. Lastly, Sectarian Islamists direct their violence against Muslims from another denomination because they deem them to be insufficiently pure, outright heretical, or a threat to their sect. Sectarian Islamists also direct their violence against other religious communities during intercommunal rivalries. Each form of Islamist political violence has an underlying motivation, a particular targeting portfolio, and a
number of ideological justifications. All four strands of Islamist political violence exist today, sometimes in the same conflict zone. Additionally, some groups are hybrids that combine two or more strands of violent Islamism, or sometimes form alliances with one another, further complicating the classification of this diverse and fractionalized movement. Understanding this diversity is necessary to formulating measured responses to curtail their violence and avoid radicalizing future generations of Muslims.
groups to make tradeoffs between alliance partners and ideology, thereby narrowing the ideological diversity of alliances. Methodologically, we apply a novel network approach to insurgent factional realignments in Iraq from 2003 to 2009. This case demonstrates that concern for declining organizational power does not completely override ideological considerations. Iraqi rebel groups that needed new allies to remedy their diminishing power formed alliances with armed factions that shared their highest ideological priorities while giving up other ideological demands that would have hindered cooperation with prospective allies.
large part by two factors: factional fragmentation and external state intervention. Both movements suffered from internal fragmentation into competing factions, which enabled their local detractors to benefit from their factionalism and infighting. And both pan-Arab nationalists and pan-Islamists have had to contend with western states opposing their ideological visions and supporting their local rivals every step of the way. As a result, the map of the Middle East remains more or less that same as it was founded a century ago.
This book sheds light on the origins of the strategy and ideology of the Islamic State, its sectarian warfare, and extremist narratives rooted in its jihadi-Salafi worldview.
their secular regimes and establish Islamic states in their place. They aim to take state power in order to recast the polity as an Islamic utopia, where laws and social mores are governed completely by Islamic laws and traditions. Transnational jihadists extend the radical ethos of the revolutionaries beyond national borders and attack Western governments and their citizens to compel those states to abandon support for secular regimes in the Muslim world. Some of these global jihadists aspire to establish an Islamic empire---a Caliphate—that cuts across state boundaries, thus abrogating the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty. Islamic Nationalists, by contrast, make territorial claims that are limited in scope. They harness the narrative of defensive jihad to fight foreign occupations of their homelands, make irredentist claims on territories they consider historically theirs, or demand secession from an existing state. Lastly, Sectarian Islamists direct their violence against Muslims from another denomination because they deem them to be insufficiently pure, outright heretical, or a threat to their sect. Sectarian Islamists also direct their violence against other religious communities during intercommunal rivalries. Each form of Islamist political violence has an underlying motivation, a particular targeting portfolio, and a
number of ideological justifications. All four strands of Islamist political violence exist today, sometimes in the same conflict zone. Additionally, some groups are hybrids that combine two or more strands of violent Islamism, or sometimes form alliances with one another, further complicating the classification of this diverse and fractionalized movement. Understanding this diversity is necessary to formulating measured responses to curtail their violence and avoid radicalizing future generations of Muslims.
groups to make tradeoffs between alliance partners and ideology, thereby narrowing the ideological diversity of alliances. Methodologically, we apply a novel network approach to insurgent factional realignments in Iraq from 2003 to 2009. This case demonstrates that concern for declining organizational power does not completely override ideological considerations. Iraqi rebel groups that needed new allies to remedy their diminishing power formed alliances with armed factions that shared their highest ideological priorities while giving up other ideological demands that would have hindered cooperation with prospective allies.
large part by two factors: factional fragmentation and external state intervention. Both movements suffered from internal fragmentation into competing factions, which enabled their local detractors to benefit from their factionalism and infighting. And both pan-Arab nationalists and pan-Islamists have had to contend with western states opposing their ideological visions and supporting their local rivals every step of the way. As a result, the map of the Middle East remains more or less that same as it was founded a century ago.
This book sheds light on the origins of the strategy and ideology of the Islamic State, its sectarian warfare, and extremist narratives rooted in its jihadi-Salafi worldview.