The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

'Devji (Landscapes of the Jihad) examines the vitality of militant movements, arguing that in a global society, organizations like al-Qaeda have gathered meaning and strength in an "institutional vacuum." The author classifies pacifism and environmentalism as "intellectual peers" of militant Islam: they transcend traditional nation states and ideologies by identifying with "planetary ideals" like human rights and humanitarianism just as militant Islam does this by "identifying Muslims with the passive victims who embody humanity." Once Muslim suffering has been established, militants employ the "logic of equivalence" to justify acts of terrorism. Since Islamic militancy is a global phenomenon, Devji rejects the traditional scholarship that roots it in regional issues like the Palestinian cause and poverty and oppression. Most controversially, he equates militant Islam with "the plethora of non-governmental agencies dedicated to humanitarian work." He also concludes, more conventionally, that the U.S. response to militant Islam--the "global war on terror"--has transformed war "into a species of policing."' --Publishers Weekly 'The Terrorist in Search of Humanity is in many ways a sequel to Devji's equally provocative 2005 book, Landscapes of the Jihad. In that work, rather than concentrating on the spectacular violence that has been the focus of most experts, Devji argues that al Qa'eda's real achievement is to have created a new kind of MuslimA", one whose attachments to the traditions and institutions of Islam are radically unlike those of his predecessors. The new militancy cannot be understood by inserting it into a now-familiar history of Islamic extremism (Wahhabism, Sayyid Qutb, the Taliban, etc.), because what is significant about the jihadis of today is their relation to the present, or even to the future. Al Qa'eda's importance in the long run,A" Devji writes, lies not in its pioneering a new form of networked militancy... but instead in its fragmentation of traditional structures of Muslim authority within new global landscapes.A" ... it is a measure of Devji's seriousness, and his unfailingly original turn of mind, that one waits impatiently for his next provocation.'- The National (Abu Dhabi) 'Devji (Landscapes of the Jihad) examines the vitality of militant movements, arguing that in a global society, organizations like al-Qaeda have gathered meaning and strength in an "institutional vacuum." The author classifies pacifism and environmentalism as "intellectual peers" of militant Islam: they transcend traditional nation states and ideologies by identifying with "planetary ideals" like human rights and humanitarianism just as militant Islam does this by "identifying Muslims with the passive victims who embody humanity." Once Muslim suffering has been established, militants employ the "logic of equivalence" to justify acts of terrorism. Since Islamic militancy is a global phenomenon, Devji rejects the traditional scholarship that roots it in regional issues like the Palestinian cause and poverty and oppression. Most controversially, he equates militant Islam with "the plethora of non-governmental agencies dedicated to humanitarian work." He also concludes, more conventionally, that the U.S. response to militant Islam--the "global war on terror"--has transformed war "into a species of policing.'-Publishers Weekly 'Devji's text is an original, timely and extremely impressive contribution to the scholarship on militant Islam and contemporary global politics. Unlike much of the current literature on these topics which focus on the 'secret history' of clandestine networks or essentialising accounts of political Islam, he allows us to situate Islamic militancy within the discursive proximity and exchange which globalisation enables. ... His analytical focus is the moral economy of militant Islam's struggle against the West. While, for those operating within it, this struggle contains the potential for a new global politics, he shows how Islamic militancy suffers from de-politicisation as a consequence of its global diffusion, lack of political instrumentality and institutional realisation. The result of this is an 'existential dimension' to militant ideas and practices which the work's chapters elaborate upon while also offering substantive historical and conceptual engagement with their separate themes.' Shane Brighton, Birkbeck College, University of London

A global society has come into being, but possesses as yet no political institutions of its own. In his new book, Faisal Devji argues that new forms of militancy, like that of Al Qaeda, achieve meaning in this institutional vacuum, while representing in their various ways the search for a global politics. From environmentalism to pacifism and beyond, such a politics can only be one that takes humanity itself as its object, hence militant practices are informed by the same search that animates humanitarianism, which from human rights to humanitarian intervention has become the global aim and signature of all contemporary politics.This is the search for humanity as an agent and not simply the victim of history. To the militant, victimized Muslims represent not their religion so much as humanity itself, and terrorism the effort to turn this humanity into an historical actor - since it is after all the globe's only possible actor. For environmentalists and pacifists as much as for our holy warriors, a global humanity has in this way replaced the international proletariat as the "Sleeping Beauty" of history.