Article in International Studies · April 018 doi: 10. 1177/0020881718790687 citations reads 4,427 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects

 

The Jihadist Perspective 

Most radical in their worldview, the jihadists, primarily represented by al-Qaeda for the last ten 

to fifteen years and currently by the Islamic State (IS), dominates contemporary Islam versus the 

West conflict that flared up soon after the tragic 9/11 attacks on the US. This perspective differs 

from the traditional approach in two important respects: a) its highly fanatical worldview; and b) 

its resort to military actions to coerce the West to pack up and leave the Muslim Middle East. 

Guided by the radical philosophy of Sayyid Qutb, the jihadists hope to bring about a global 

change in favor of Islam through a showdown with the West. Hence, al-Qaeda’s and IS’s 

strategies mark a clear shift from the previous theoretical debates, what may be called the Islamic 

inter-paradigm debates, initiated by the traditional and modernist approaches to international 

relations. While the traditional and modernist approaches are well grounded in the classical 

Islamic texts, the jihadist perspective is characterized by its open hostility towards the West in 

general and the US, in particular. Jihadist writings and pamphlets generally lack theoretical, 

discursive and analytical views on complex realities about world affairs. Their rabid anti-

Americanism and their belief about an unavoidable clash with the West mostly characterize their 

worldview (Adib-Moghaddam 2011).       

 

Livesey (2005) explains al-Qaeda’s ideology as a combination of Salafism and jihadi thought. 

Salafism is a fundamentalist movement committed to the revival of authentic Islam as practiced 

by Prophet Muhammad himself and the pious forefathers – the first three generations of Muslims 

who are believed to have lived the correct way of Islamic life lasting up to 810 CE (Meijer 2013, 

p. 3). Al-Qaeda, as a Salafist organization (Haykel 2013), has sought to achieve a series of 

objectives: an idealized Islamic society reminiscent of the time of Prophet Muhammad; the 

restoration of authentic Islam by purging it of centuries of foreign influences (read Western); a 

return to Islamic universalism through the re-establishment of the caliphate; and the promotion 

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of an Islamic global order to establish, promote and uphold global peace. There can be no global 

peace, al-Qaeda believes, without a global Islamic order.  Burke (2004) contends that al-Qaeda 

has ever sought to destroy the West to usher in an Islamic global order but to beat the West back 

to free up Muslim lands from Western influences; its secondary objective has been to revive the 

Islamic caliphate comprising the lands of early Islamic period in the Middle East, Africa, 

Andalusia, Balkans and Central Asia.            

 

Al-Qaeda’s ambitious objectives clearly distinguish it from the basic urge and missions of the 

previous Islamic revivalist movements under the traditional approach, chiefly articulated by 

Sayyid Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini in the modern context. Tibi (1998: 138) mentions a 

number of revivalist objectives, including a fight against Western secularism in the Muslim 

world, the replacement of the nation-state system with the caliphate and human authority with 

God’s authority, and a return to Divine rule based on Islamic Sharia. The revivalists sought to 

achieve these objectives within the parameters of the Muslim world while not looking for a 

direct confrontation with the West. But al-Qaeda’s radical objectives crossed the boundary to 

directly clash with the West. It defies the reality of Western cultural and military dominance in 

the world and is seeking to change the reality in a way that would conform to their idealized 

Islamic world order.  

 

A series of global and regional developments in the last three decades or so decisively shaped the 

radical visions and objectives of al-Qaeda, as formulated by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-

Zawahiri.

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 The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a catalyst that drew Muslim fighters 

from all over the world to drive out the Red Army from the holy Muslim land of Afghanistan. 

The Arab fighters under the leadership of bin Laden played a heroic role in the fight and they 

came to be branded as ‘Afghan Arabs.’ After their successful fight against the invading forces 

resulting in a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan by 1988, many Arab fighters, including bin 

Laden, as well as the Afghan Mujahedeen arrived at a dangerous conclusion: it was they who 

successfully fought and brought down the mighty Soviet power (Habeck 2006, p. 168). Bin 

Laden and his Arab fighters looked at America through the same prism; they perceived America 

                                                           

 

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as far weaker, less fearsome than the Soviet forces and that America could be easily intimidated 

to pack up and leave the Middle East.  

 

The 1991 Gulf War provided America the opportunity to establish bases in the Gulf Arab states 

to counter and eliminate future challengers to American dominance and bolster the defense of its 

regional allies. Bin Laden and his associates soon identified two types of enemies – the ‘near 

enemy’ (the Arab states aligned with the US) and the ‘far enemy’ (the West, primarily the US) 

and preferred to fight the US to force it into retreat and then attack the vulnerable Arab regimes 

to free up the Middle East from Western control and domination (Habeck 2006, p. 176).  

Towards that end, al-Qaeda issued a statement in February 1998 under the banner of ‘The World 

Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jew and Crusaders’ urging all Muslims to fight the US 

(Philpott 2002, p. 91).   

 

The 9/11 attacks finally heated up the turf for a showdown between al-Qaeda and the US and its 

allies but US withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011 left al-Qaeda and other radical 

organizations on the political margin. The Arab Spring, particularly the Syrian civil war, brought 

back al-Qaeda to business as usual. But this time its breakaway group – the Islamic State in Iraq 

and Syria (ISIS), declared in April 2013, seized the momentum by capturing territories in the 

Syrian governorates of al-Raqqah, Idlib, Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo. The ISIS dominance soon got 

extended to Iraq after a successful military blitzkrieg in the summer of 2014, followed by the 

proclamation of an Islamic caliphate, also called the IS, on 29 June 2014. Abu Bakr Al-

Baghdadi, the IS leader, declared himself the new caliph of all Sunni Muslims, and in his first 

official speech he divided the world into two opposing camps – ‘the camp of Islam and faith’, 

and ‘the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy’

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. While the Sunni Muslims and the Mujahedeen 

populate the first camp, the second camp includes the West, America’s Arab allies and the rest of 

the nations, including Shi’a Iran. This division reminds us of the old typology of Dar al-Islam 

and Dar al-Harb, but with a distinctive sectarian tinge since the Dar al-Islam now excludes the 

Shi’a Muslims who the IS has branded as apostates. The proclamation of the IS has seriously 

shaken the whole world prompting the US, its European and Middle Eastern allies and Iran to 

fight and contain the IS threat. The fight against the IS has culminated in the military defeat of 

                                                           

 

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the organization, though its ideological death may not be so imminent. The IS threat to the post-

World War I colonial political map of the Middle East is over.  

 

The jihadist perspective, on the whole, is marked by a good number of striking features. Coming 

out of the theoretical domain, it has attempted to actualize what it believes in and stands for – the 

realization of a global Islamic order through a return to the Sharia and the re-establishment of an 

Islamic caliphate. The last Ottoman Empire-based Islamic caliphate was abolished in 1924. 

Secondly, the jihadist school is resolute in its approach to international relations – its objectives 

appeared absolute and non-negotiable. It has unsuccessfully adopted jihad (here armed struggle 

against the West and its declared and undeclared allies) to make its way forward. It was 

committed to a return to the original faith through the restoration of Islam as the dominant force 

in the world. It declared that it would not be satiated until that would happen but has fallen flat.

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