Jihad as is well known to the readers of this website, is an element of Islam.1 However, Jihad as we have seen, is also a new phenomenon including a reflection of modernity. In several cases, the internal dynamics of this latter type of jihad group are remarkably similar to those of certain types of sectarian New Religious Movements (NMRs).2 In fact as explained NMRs, often include beliefs and worldviews that differ from the norm.3 In fact, Michael Langone, in an article in the Cultic Studies Review, suggested that "cultic studies experts can contribute to the international conversation about jihadism because they have experience in understanding. . . 'alien' systems of thought and values."4

An overlap between scholarship on terrorism and scholarship on NRMs was recognized by among others Jerrold Post, writing in 1986 on the neo-Marxist terrorism of the 1970s, referred to work on the Unification Church.5 Insights gained through the studies of NRMs were also applied in one of the most important studies of al-Qaeda, Marc Sageman's Understanding Terror Networks.6 Sageman (referred to in our in depth study of specifically violent Salafi groups), a forensic psychiatrist who had been a U. S. Foreign Service officer during the 1980s, investigated the background and motivations of members of al-Qaeda's cells in Montreal and Hamburg, the former of which was responsible for the failed millennium attack on Los Angeles international airport, and the latter of which provided the key operatives for 9/11. In analyzing how and why his subjects "joined the jihad," Sageman drew productively on the work of Rodney Stark, William Sims Bainbridge, and Eileen Barker.7 As he showed, entry into a group that would become an al-Qaeda cell and entry into an NRM have a lot in common. Coming at much the same problem from the opposite direction, Langone has argued convincingly that joining a jihadist group can usefully be seen as a form of conversion.8

But first we will seek to situate the topic of this introduction, by examining the main varieties of jihad and the main varieties of Islamism-the most important of which has little to do with jihad. The concept of jihad is an ancient one, with a complex subsequent history. This history was initially analyzed by Rudolph Peters, in a 1979 book that has perhaps received too little attention.9 In fact six main varieties of jihad may be distinguished: the classical doctrine, jihad as propaganda, modem "defensive jihad," anti-colonial jihad, pacifist jihad, and Islamist jihad.10 There are other minor varieties, some of which are mentioned below. Sometimes, confusingly, the label mujahid Gihader, plural mujahidun) is also applied to those not actually engaged in jihad. In Afghanistan in the 1990s, for example, the mujahidun were those who had formerly fought in the jihad against the Soviets, but had since become little more than feuding bandits. In Algeria, the FLN called their fighters mujahidun, but their fight against the French was jihad only in a metaphorical sense-most of the FLN were socialists and secular nationalists. One final note on terminology: a mujahid is not necessarily the same as a 'jihadist," although "jihadist" is sometimes used to mean mujahid. For many, a "jihadist" is not just a participant in ajihad, but a believer in "Jihadism."

There are primarely two varieties of jihad, as having special relevance for scholarship in NRMs. The classical doctrine is not one of them, and has anyhow been of little importance for centuries. Today's mainstream doctrine of "defensive jihad" also has little to do with NRM scholarship, nor does jihad as propaganda. The varieties of jihad that have special relevance for NRM scholarship are the two extremes: the pacifist jihad that emerges within NRMs, and the jihad of Islamist terrorists, who operate on a model similar to that of members of sectarian NRMs.

The classical doctrine of jihad was first formalized around the tenth century, as part of the general process whereby Islamic doctrine and law were codified from the source texts ofIslam: the Quran and the hadith (reports of the words and actions of the Prophet). The result of this general process was the sharia, the fully worked-out system of rules and principles that govern all aspects of the lives of devout Muslims.12 One reason for this process of codification was that the text of the Quran, taken on its own, often permitted contradictory conclusions on significant matters-including, importantly, jihad. Since one of the motives behind codification was the need to answer practical questions as they arose, sharia rules on jihad naturally reflected the conventions of warfare of the times, which were similar in Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. Among the practical questions that were addressed were the division of plunder and the circumstances under which prisoners might be ransomed, enslaved or executed. The sharia rules also reflected the geopolitical circumstances of the times, and so included an assumption of a state of intermittent but more or less continuous warfare between Muslim and non-Muslim states (though, as Colin Turner reminds us in this issue, the important Abbasid dynasty in practice preferred a more peaceful approach to international relations).13

No real attention was paid to the justification for, or the objectives of, jihad: its fundamental objective was, fairly obviously, victory. In its classic formation, then, sharia doctrine on jihad was not so much about war and peace as about the conduct of war-in Western terms, jus in bello rather than jus ad bello. It was a mixture of the Army Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, appropriate for the circumstances of the times.

Developments in international relations gradually reduced this classic doctrine to virtual irrelevance. When the Ottoman Empire started its rise to world power in the fourteenth century, sharia rules onjihad still mattered. By the time the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed in 1918, its defeated leaders fleeing in a German submarine, sharia rules on jihad had long been replaced by the standard modem conventions which guided the actions of other combatant states. Jihad did, however, playa small part in the First World War, but as propaganda rather than as religious or legal doctrine. At the start of the war, the Shaykh al-Islam-the senior Ottoman religious dignitary-publicly proclaimed a jihad against England, France, and Russia. The hope was that this proclamation would help to motivate the Ottoman war effort, and might also create disaffection among the Muslim populations of the three empires in question. This was a possibility that worried the allied governments concerned,14 but did not in the end materialize. Other Muslim states have since imitated this late Ottoman use of jihad as propaganda. The Egyptian army, for example, is said to have used it to raise morale during the 1973 October (Yom Kippur) War. The use of the idea of jihad for its propaganda value by a ministry of information, though, is very different from the application of the detailed rules of the classic doctrine. Although no regular army or state has applied the classical rules of jihad for centuries, certain parts of the classical doctrine remain relevant, since all other varieties of jihad derive, to a greater or lesser extent, from the classical doctrine. They also use the same technical terminology.

The single most important point about jihad is that participation is a religious duty that brings religious rewards. Religious duties in Islam may be either individual duties (fard ayn) such as prayer, which every Muslim must perform, or communal duties (fard kifaya) such as the study of Arabic grammar (necessary for Quranic exegesis), which must be performed by a sufficient number of Muslims, but not by every Muslim. Participation in jihad is normally a communal duty, but under certain circumstances can become an individual duty. The key issue is under what circumstances this happens, a question on which there is disagreement. There is no disagreement, however, about the religious reward for those who die while participating in jihad: all who die in this way are martyrs (shuhada, singular shahid), and are automatically saved from the fire and admitted to heaven. Even for those who do not die, participation in jihad is a virtuous deed that will be rewarded, as well as a form of spiritual discipline.

Another important point is that jihad is only waged against nonMuslims. War between Muslims happens-whether war between Muslim states or civil war in a Muslim state-but it is plain war, not jihad. None of the rules of jihad apply, including those relating to duties and rewards. The key issue here is the definition of "Muslim." The generally accepted definition is very wide, including anyone who states that they are Muslim and has not clearly shown that this is not the case (for example by publicly adopting and following another religion). Some, however, have always argued for narrower definitions, which allow warfare against groups that would nonnally be regarded as Muslim to count as jihad. Those who adopt such narrower definitions are known colloquially as takfiris.

Takfiris, technically, the declaration that someone is a nonMuslim (kafir) rather than a Muslim. Talifiris practice takfiron a grand scale, thus sometimes broadening the scope of jihad to include conflict with almost anyone who disagrees with them.The third variety of jihad, after the classic doctrine and jihad as propaganda, is what might be called "defensive jihad," the understandings of jihad that were advanced by most Muslims during 2006 in response to Pope Benedict XVI's quotation from Theodore Khoury's quotation from Emperor Manuel II. These understandings of "defensive jihad" differ significantly from the understandings current at the time of Manuel II's captor Bayezid I, but they represent the consensus of most Muslims today. Few of today's Muslims realize that they have little or no basis in the classic doctrine.15 Their origin, as Peters shows, lies in the nineteenth century, in the same circumstances that John Hanson, in his article in this issue, uses to explain Ahmadi doctrine. 16 Many Muslims in British India felt obliged to demonstrate their loyalty to the British King-Emperor, and also to combat the characterization of Islam as a "religion of the sword," barbaric in comparison to Christianity's emphasis on love. This resulted in a rethinking of jihad that made it more or less compatible with Western concepts of "just war."Another result was the broadening of the meaning of the word jihad to emphasize non-violent struggle, whether against one's own lower self (nafs, ego) or for goals such as national development. The former of these non-violent senses of jihad, generally called "the greater jihad," was not a new concept; what was new was putting it in opposition to the classical concept, "the lesser jihad," rather than seeing the two as distinct or even as complementary. In the latter of these non-violent senses of jihad, one can have ajihad against absenteeism, just as one can have a "crusade" against absenteeism. Both the "jihad of the pen" and "metaphorical jihad" are among other places also discussed in the recent  of Nova Religio (California USA).17 Both these understandings of "the lesser jihad" as primarily defensive and these understandings of jihad as potentially non-military had become widely accepted throughout the Muslim world by the start of the twentieth century, and remain dominant today.

The fourth variety of jihad is what Peters called "anti-colonial jihad." Although the classical doctrine of jihad had become irrelevant to states by the nineteenth century, save for propaganda purposes, it remained relevant for irregular and rebel forces. Once European armies had defeated Muslim states in various parts of the Muslim world during the nineteenth century, a number of sub-state resistance movements came into being. All of these lay outside the Westphalian system, and all made some use of the classic doctrine of jihad, often for its legitimizing and unifying value, as Michael Kemper shows later in this issue. 18 Such jihads were, of course, also defensive jihads-even if the defense was sometimes pre-emptive. The most famous of these anti-colonialjihads were those against the French in Algeria, against the Russians in Daghestan, against the Italians in Libya, and against the British in Somalia, all of which established short-lived political structures that might be called states. Two of these "anti-colonial jihads" are discussed by Kemper: the Daghestani jihad of Shaykh Shamil (the forerunner of the current Chechen jihad); and the Algerian jihad of the Amir Abd al-Qadir, probably the only jihad leader to be awarded the Legion d'honneur. There were also anti-colonial jihads against Muslim empires, most famously that of the Sudanese Mahdi against Turco-Egyptian rule. These necessarily involved takfir. Since the Sudanese Mahdist state was finally defeated by the British, "Mahdism" became established in the imperial lexicon as an extreme form of "Mohammedan fanaticism." Its more precise meaning is discussed later in this issue by Hanson.

The fifth concept of jihad is "pacifist jihad." This is an extreme development of "defensive jihad," and is of special interest because it is associated with NRMs. Two articles in this issue discuss the pacifist doctrines of two different groups. One is the Ahmadiyya of Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), which now has up to twenty million followers worldwide. The other is the Nurcus, the followers of Said Nursi (1878-1960), who now number some seven million. Hanson, in his article, shows how Ghulam Ahmad's interpretation of jihad formed part of a novel interpretation of Islam that was rejected by most other Muslims, more because of its methods and assumptions than because of its conclusions. Turner, in his article, shows how Nursi's interpretations, though perhaps equally novel, reached similar conclusions while avoiding a break with the rest of the Sunni community.

The sixth and final concept of jihad, Islamist jihad, is that which is nowadays most familiar in the West, and is exemplified byal-Qaeda. This variety of jihad is discussed further below. Of the six main varieties of jihad, then, all are modem save the classical doctrine and (to some extent) anti-colonial jihad. Jihad as propaganda retains the basic idea of religious duty and religious rewards, but is fundamentally just a form of propaganda. "Defensive jihad," the current mainstream interpretation, is of relatively recent origin, and is essentially compatible with contemporary mainstream Western "just war" theories-from which it in major part ultimately derives.The two main alternatives to "defensive jihad," on which this issue focuses, are pacifist jihad and Islamistjihad.

Pacifistjihad-called "nonviolent" by Hanson in this issue-is not only modem, as is shown in later articles, but is also associated with NRMs. Several other NRMs, not examined,have similar views.19 The case of Islamist jihad is more complicated, partly because Islamist mujahidun stress continuity between today's jihads and those of the time of the Prophet, and partly because many Western commentators condemn it as medievally barbaric. However, as will be argued below, it is modem in the sense that Islamism is modem, as is terrorism.20 It is alternative not only in the sense that it differs from the mainstream, but in the sense that many types of jihad group have much the same internal dynamics as certain types of sectarian NRMs.

There is little consensus on the precise meaning of "Islamism," and this essay does not allow space to examine the question in much depth. It is generally accepted-by scholars, if not by Islamists themselves-that Islamism is a modem phenomenon, and is distinguished by its strong political emphases. Indeed, "political Islam" is sometimes used interchangeably with "Islamism."Islam, famously, does not recognize an explicit division between the religious and political spheres. In practice, however, different strands of Islam and different groups within Islam have given greatly varying degrees of emphasis to the political relative to the spiritual. Said Nursi, as Turner shows, emphasized the spiritual. Islamism emphasizes the political. Islamism also addresses modem political issues: the state, social justice, economics, social engineering, and ideology. Some early Islamists were explicit that there was an urgent need for an Islamic ideology to stand against competing ideologies of Western origin such as Communism and capitalism.21 Some contemporary Muslim critics of Islamism have in turn condemned Islamism as an ideologization, and so a severe distortion, of Islam.22 Ideology is, arguably, quintessentially modem, and so may be seen as the most important way in which Islamism itself is modem. In Turner's article, Islamism is also described as an aspect of newly "resurgent identity."

The crucial characteristics of Islamists, then, are that they focus on politics, and that they promote a particular ideology. These characteristics matter more than do doctrinal distinctions between "fundamentalists," liberals, modernists, traditionalists and so on. Whatever "funda mentalist" means when applied to Islam,23 it does not require an emphasis on the political, and need not be ideological. Like fundamentalists, liberal modernists come in both political and apolitical varieties; some are ideological, and some are not.24Islamists, then, are by definition interested in political power, since otherwise they would be just Muslims, not Islamists. However, just as Islamist jihad is only one type of jihad, mujahidun are only one type of Islamist. Political power may be reached by various means, both violent and non-violent. Although it is Islamist mujahidun that dominate the news, non-violent Islamist groups are more frequently found, larger, and in the end probably more important. Every Muslim country with any semblance of an electoral process has at least one Islamist group that engages in this process as a regular political party, as do many countries in which Muslims are a minority.

Hamas and Hizbullah are now the most famous Islamist political parties, but are atypical in having violent pasts and in combining violence with electoral politics. Most Islamist political parties have no more to do with violence than non-Islamist parties do. In Egypt, for example, the Muslim Brothers now form the most important opposition bloc in parliament, and as a group have had no involvement with violence since the 1940s (or perhaps the early 1950s). Certainly, many violent Islamist groups and individuals have split off from the Muslim Brothers--but the same might be said of certain European socialist parties. In Turkey, the Refah party gained power by purely electoral means,25 and has since developed into the fairly centrist governing AK party. PAS is likewise an entirely regular political party, winning and losing power in several Malaysian states. The list could continue almost indefinitely. Doubts are sometimes expressed as to whether any of these parties are truly democratic, or secretly believe in "one man, one vote, once." The answer to this conundrum probably lies in the political practice of the states in question. In Turkey, where it is now well established that a party that loses an election relinquishes power gracefully and tries again later, Islamists may be expected to continue to follow the prevailing norm. In countries such as Egypt, where no regime has relinquished power voluntarily since the 1940s, the question is more open. “cults,” “alternative religious movements,” and “nonconventional religious movements” to describe religious movements that “follow an altogether different religious structure, one foreign and alien to the prevalent religious communities.” Islamist mujadihun, then, are a minority among Islamists. At least for their own societies, they are also generally the least significant form of Islamism. They differ from non-violent Islamists primarily in their choice of means for achieving political power, but they differ also in their degree of radicalism. All Islamist analyses of the deficiencies of current systems have much in common, as do their remedies, which focus in one way or another on implementing the sharia, often understood more as constitution or ideology than as legal system.26 Democratic Islamists, however, seek to reform systems, and include some degree of political pluralism in their remedies. Islamist mujahidun, in contrast, seek to destroy and replace current systems, and have little or no time for pluralism. The distinction mirrors that between democratic socialists and revolutionary socialists.Just as there are different types ofIslamists, there are different types of Islamist mujahidun. They can be subdivided between terrorists and guerillas, and further subdivided in terms of their enemies, who may be domestic or external. For the purposes of this essay, these distinctions matter most because of their implications for the size and dynamics of mujahidun groups.

As is notorious, the distinction between terrorism and guerilla warfare often lies in the eye of the beholder. Today's Chechen mujahidun, for example, are very clearly terrorists in the eyes of Moscow, but are guerillas in the eyes of many elsewhere. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to take another example, has spent much of his life leading mujahidun against foreign soldiers in Mghanistan. In 1985, when the foreign soldiers were Soviet, he was invited to meet President Reagan in Washington, D.C.:!7 Twenty year later, when the foreign soldiers were American, Hekmatyar was doing much what he had always done, but this time Washington was reportedly trying to kill him. Valid distinctions may, however, be made between terrorism and guerilla warfare, especially on the basis of the techniques employed.:!8 A bomb left in an otherwise peaceful city street is characteristic of terrorism, while an attack on an army patrol is characteristic of guerilla warfare. Distinctions may also be made on the basis of the size of the group. A small group of a dozen people cannot possibly carry on effective guerilla warfare, and thus small groups are associated with terrorism. Large groups, in contrast, are associated with guerilla warfare, though they may still use techniques characteristic of terrorism-just as states may, though this is unusual.

The significance of the distinction between the small terrorist group and the large guerilla group is that the former bears striking resemblances to certain NRMs, which are explored later in this essay. The small terrorist group tends to be isolated, while larger groups tend to be more integrated into society. The large guerilla group often starts as a small terrorist group, or even as what Kemper calls a "new religious activist group," but once it has grown to a certain size and switched its emphases from terrorist actions to guerilla warfare and practical coalition building, it has more in common with a nineteenth-century anticolonial jihad group. The distinction is a version of the familiar one between (small and isolated) sect and (larger and more or less accepted) denomination.29

The distinction between Islamist mujahidun whose enemies are domestic and Islamist mujahidun whose enemies are external-whether actual or potential occupiers-has implications which are doctrinal as well as organizational, since domestic enemies are generally Muslim, and so have to be classified as non-Muslims by takfirin order for conflict with them to count as jihad. Since external enemies are generally nonMuslim, takfir is not required, although anti-colonial jihads often involved conflict with domestic as well as external enemies, necessitating a degree of takfir, as Kemper shows. The distinction also has sociological implications, since mujahidun attacking their own government tend to be small and covert groups, while groups of mujahidun engaged in guerilla warfare against a foreign occupier are often comparatively large and well integrated into society.30 Islamist mujahidun whose enemies are domestic, then, are most likely to resemble an NRM.

A special case is that of Islamist mujahidun who engage in global struggle. The idea that change in the global system is a prerequisite for local change is not a new one, and was promoted by Friedrich Engels. Stalin had determined on "socialism in one country" by 1926, but the neo-Marxist revolutionaries of the 1970s returned to the idea of global revolution, producing extensive cooperation between, for example, the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Just as the United States was the prime target for the neoMarxist global revolutionaries of the 1970s, the United States remains the prime target for today's global Islamist mujahidun, including alQaeda. Al-Qaeda thus attacks an external enemy while having many of the characteristics of a group whose enemy is domestic.

Why the United States is seen as the source of the Muslim world's ills is a question that lies beyond the scope of this essay. It is important to note, however, that the underlying political analysis is common in most parts of the Muslim world. The Pew Global Attitudes Project identified attitudes that shocked many Americans, including the drop inJordanian approval ratings of the United States from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003, or the view of 60 percent of Turks that the United States is the major threat to world peace; only 6 percent saw North Korea as the major threat.31 These results have merely confirmed what is obvious to any resident of the Arab world.32 Only the best educated and most cosmopolitan Egyptians, for example, even begin to question the general assumption of implacable American hostility towards Arabs and Muslims. Religion plays a part in this widespread political analysis, but history, politics, and media representations playa more important part. Many Americans are likewise convinced of the implacable hostility toward them of the Arab world, of course.

Researchers  have sought to explain terrorism on various levels: that of the cause, that of the group, and that of the individual. All of these are important. A terrorist group requires a cause, and this will generally be political, and also will generally be ideologically or religiously defined. Sometimes, ideology and religion can become so intertwined that it becomes difficult to distinguish the one from the other, as is the case with Islamism. Cause and ideology, however, are necessary explanations of terrorism, but are not sufficient explanations. Many individuals may subscribe to a cause, such as national independence, or an ideology, such as anarchism or Islamism, but only a few of them become terrorists.The group matters, as well as the cause. It is impossible to understand a group's original decision to adopt a strategy of terrorist violence without understanding the external history of the group itself, and of the state in which, or against which, it operates. At some point, the leadership of any terrorist group has determined that there is no better way than terrorism of achieving its objective, either because it decides that no other way is available, or because it decides that other ways would take too long. The leadership has also decided that terrorism is morally justified, and that it is likely to work. These decisions are interesting ones, especially because they are usually wrong decisions. Leaving morality aside for the moment, it is striking that most attempts to use terrorism have failed, statistically speaking. There are, however, occasional examples of success: the IRA in the 1920s, Zionist terrorism in the 1940s, the Algerian FLN in the 1950s and 1960s. It is probably these "inspiring examples" that explain why terrorism tends to come in waves.33

NRM scholarship is ofl ittle use in understanding cause, ideology, or the external history of a group. Cause and ideology lie primarily in the sphere of political science, and external history lies in the sphere of the general history of particular societies. NRM scholarship, however, does have a lot to offer in the attempt to understand individual terrorists, and also the internal history and mechanics of terrorist groups-including the way in which a group responds to external events. Much of the work that has been done on how and why NRMs turn to violence is highly relevant to the study of sectarian terrorist groups, whether jihadist or nonreligious. One important difference, however, is that while certain NRMs turn to violence, terrorist groups-perhaps especially jihadist groupsmay actually be formed for the purpose of violence. Another difference is that although some jihadist groups are somewhat apocalyptic,34 most are not. A final difference is that there is arguably more rationality in the decision of a jihadist group to adopt violence than there is in the decision of an NRM to turn to violence. Violence has been a means through which political groups have achieved their ends, either fully or in part. This has not, so far as I know, been the case with any NRM.

It is in the area of internal dynamics that parallels with different approaches to understanding NRMs are most striking. Brainwashing, for example, is often advanced as an explanation for both terrorist and "cult" behavior.35 Psychology has also provided a number of hypotheses for explaining terrorism, as well as NRMs. In the case of terrorism, psychological explanations have ranged from the "relative-deprivation hypothesis" to the "narcissism-aggression hypothesis. "36 The problems with both brainwashing and psychological approaches are well known to NRM scholars, and need not be repeated here. This essay will focus on other points.As has been noted, small, compact and isolated terrorist cells have more in common with the sect, and larger guerilla groups have more in common with the denomination. The distinction is not absolute, however, since even large guerilla groups require some degree of clandestinity for operational reasons, and good security often requires that a large organization consist of small, compact, and relatively autonomous cells. This is the case, for example, with al-Qaeda.37 Similarly, even small terrorist groups may retain contact with a supportive milieu, as was the case with the Red Brigades and is the case with most jihad groups-but is not the case with NRMs such as Aum Shinrikyo, as jean-Fran.;ois Mayer has pointed out.38Aum Shinrikyo was very much on its own. A jihad group, however, may be envisaged as one of a series of Chinese boxes. First there is humanity as a whole; then there is the general society of a particular country. Within that are pious Muslims, and then Islamists in general. Next corne Islarnists who are broadly in favor of the use of violence, but do not necessarily carry this into practice. Finally, in the last box, is the jihad group itself.

Despite this, the decision to join a terrorist jihad group is not taken lightly. There is a big gap between the many who to some extent approve of the use of violence to achieve ends they value, and the few who actually move from reflection to action. Like the decision to join any terrorist group, the decision to join a jihad group has enormous implications for any individual. Membership of any such group is almost certainly the most important thing in any member's life, both in terms of identity andof purpose. The worldviews and activities practiced within the group are very different from those in most of the surrounding society, creating a significant degree of tension. This tension both keeps the group compact and makes it easier for the mental worlds-notably values and assumptions-inside the group to differ significantly from those outside, in the wider society.This description of a typical terrorist group (Islarnist or non-religious) sounds remarkably similar to a description of an NRM. In fact, Bryan Wilson's five "specific sociological indicia of the sect" might equally well describe a terrorist group or cell. They are (1) that a sect is "exclusivistic" in relation to the prevailing norm, (2) that the sect "maintains a degree of tension with the world," (3) is a voluntary body with (4) possibilities of "discipline. . . even expulsion," and (5) is a "primary source of social identity" for its members.39 Rex Hudson is explicit about this similarity, though using somewhat different "indicia":

Terrorist groups are similar to religious sects or cults. They require total commitment by members; they often prohibit relations with outsiders . . . they regulate and sometimes ban sexual relations; they impose conformity; they seek cohesiveness through interdependence and mutual trust; and they attempt to brainwash individual members with their particular ideology.4o As has already been noted, brainwashing is a problematic concept. However, in a loose and metaphorical sense, it might be said that all members of all small and compact groups, including families, tend to brainwash each other, by encouraging some views and behaviors and discouraging others. Group views and group decisions thus emerge--and these, rather than ideology in a broader sense, are what matter most in the explanation of terrorism in general and of Islamist terrorist jihad in particular.NRMs may indeed "prohibit relations with outsiders," or at least seek to minimize such relations. This separation may then be reinforced by the hostility of outsiders. What is true for some NRMs is even more true for terrorist groups. Members of an NRM may perceive the outside world as an existential threat. For members of a terrorist cell, the outside world really is an existential threat: if it is not actually trying to kill them, which it may well be, it is certainly trying to jail them. Since all and any relations with outsiders are a potential security risk, some form of clandestinity is required. The isolation from broader social networks that has been so often noted in studies of members of NRMs becomes even greater. A wanted terrorist sometimes cannot even visit a close relation once a year, cannot sit in a cafe, or sometimes cannot even go into a supermarket.

Given these similarities, it is not surprising that it is not always obvious whether a given group is an NRM or a terrorist group. The classic example of this is Aum Shinrikyo, which was certainly an NRM, and which was also taken until September 2001 as the prime example of socalled "fourth wave" or "religious terrorism."41 It might be argued that other groups elsewhere share very similar characteristics. For example, the history of the Society of Believers Uamaat al-Muminin), which is commonly classed as an Islamist terrorist group, resembles that of Aum Shinrikyo.The Society of Believers was established in 1971 by a group offormer Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had concluded that the society in which they lived was so corrupt that the only solution was to abandon it and start again, on truly religious principles, as interpreted by the group's leader (amir), Shukri Mustafa. The group was entirely separatist: "At a certain point in the stages of membership, [the group's] recruits were ordered to resign their jobs in the society at large, desert their families, and sever all relations with the outside world."42 Economic enterprises were set up by the group to make this separation possible; male and female members were married (by Shukri Mustafa, not under the laws of the Egyptian state) and began families. At this stage, the Society of Believers was clearly an NRM rather than a political group, even if it did have a remote political ambition-that the new society of which it was the kernel might grow to replace the old society that it had abandoned. Some violence was used, but against dissident members rather than against outsiders.43 Like Aum, the Society of Believers turned to "terrorist" violence after an accidental confrontation with the police. In 1977, probably as a result of violence against a dissident from within the group, several members were arrested. The decision was then made to kidnap Husayn al-Dhahbi, a former minister ofWaqfs (religious endowments), and use him as a hostage to demand their release. The Egyptian government refused, alDhahbi was killed, and the Society of Believers was then broken up and its leaders tried and executed.44 That they were charged under state security laws and classified as terrorists had more to do with the nature and preoccupations of the Egyptian security apparatus than with the group's nature or activities.

It might be argued that Aum Shinrikyo and the Society of Believers were both NRMs that stumbled into violence-and perhaps terrorism, depending on the definition of terrorism used.45 The reverse of this trajectory may also be observed. The Iranian Mojahedin-e-Khalq, for example, started in 1965 as an anti-Shah Islamist terrorist group, and later played an important part in Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. Mter clashing with the new Iranian regime in 1981, the remnants of the group started a long exile, mosdy in Iraq, where it developed into an implacable foe of what it called "fundamentalism"-and, according to its historian Ervand Abrahamian, also developed into a "religio-political sect."46 Devotion to its leader, Masud Rajvi, and his wife Maryam became extreme. Abrahamian quotes the testimony of an exiled mujahid: "You, Masud, have saved me and given me a new life. It was you who illuminated history. It was you who bridged the gulf between us mortals and the Prophets. It was you who brought us closer to the Prophets and the Saints. "47 Former members later reported regular sessions of public self-criticism during which members confessed their illicit sexual fantasies.48 A similar "cult of personality" based on an exemplary leader (Abdullah Ocalan), also attended by public self-criticism, developed among the Kurdish PKK in Lebanon.49 There are probably many similar cases. 50

The group dynamics that terrorist groups share with some NRMs help to explain both moral and strategic/operational decisions. The more compact and separate a group, the more easily its views can differ from that of society as a whole, and the more easily views within the group become the single, and increasingly uniform, point of reference, as the experience of the German Red Army Faction shOWS.51 This may be explained pardy by isolation from general social networks, and pardy by the way in which "the main fear of the members [of such a group] is the fear of being held in contempt and abandoned by the group," especially when abandonment can realistically be expected to result in death or imprisonment.52 The group dynamic can also help to explain the expectation-which, as has been noted, is statistically unlikely to be correct-that terrorism will achieve a group's objectives. As Post wrote, "fighting off feelings of weakness leads to a delusion of strength; and the fear of defeat leads to the certainty of success. "53 One final important implication of the small, compact and separate group remains. This is that it facilitates division of the world into "us" and "them," and a subsequent de-valorization of "them." "They" are the un-saved, and potentially the enemy; "they" can be de-humanized, and their suffering and even death becomes ofless moment. Membership of a small, compact, and isolated group encourages "an idealization of the 'we' and a projection onto 'them' of all that is wrong."54 Takfiris a useful complement to this process, but the nea-Marxist terrorists of the 1970s and the members of Aum Shinrikyo arrived at the same destination without takfir.

The importance of such Manichean worldviews has been noted by many scholars seeking to explain violence in NRMs. Catherine Wessinger writes of "radical dualism,"55 and Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins write of "exemplary dualism."56 Audrey Kurth Cronin, a terrorism scholar, has also observed that "religious terrorists often feel engaged in a Manichaean struggle of good against evil. "57 Much the same, of course, could be said of non-religious terrorists. Bernard McGinn observed that "the great temptation of apocalyptic eschatology is always to externalize good and evil in terms of present historical conflicts."58 Again, many ordinary Muslims, and many ordinary Marxists, also view present conflicts in this way. What matters, then, is not so much dualism, but how radical that dualism becomes.An understanding of the group dynamics that Islamist terrorist groups share with NRMs, then, can be most useful in understanding their decisions and behavior. It can also be very useful in understanding how and why an individual joins such a group. An understanding of conversion and of group dynamics, however, does not explain everything. Takfirdoes matter, as does the ease with which jihad can be used to motivate and justity violence. Dreams, the transcendent, and the "mythic past" matter too, as Edgar clearly shows in his article. Some of the recommendations made by Michael Langone in his (otherwise generally excellent) article on "Responding to jihadism." His  recommendation, for example, is that Parents, teachers, clergy, law enforcement personnel and others who seek to prevent young people or adults from following a path that leads toward. . . extremist violence should learn and cultivate the skills of deep, respectful communication.59

Read in an Egyptian context, for example, this recommendation falls apart. Parents vary, but the approaches to communications of the other groups mentioned by Langone are very different from the Western norm. Public schools are so poorly funded and poorly run that the activities of teachers, who cannot survive without second or even third jobs, consist exclusively of drumming set texts into heads, more or less word for word. "Clergy" do not exist as such; preachers do exist, but they have almost no pastoral role-they preach, and do not listen. The two communication skills at which law enforcement personnel are most practiced are the recruitment of informers and the extraction of confessions under duress.60 The idea ofan Egyptian police officer "cultivat[ing] the skills of deep, respectful communication" can only be described as hilarious. Sound recommendations relevant to Arab societies might well be drawn from Langone's research, but training and experience that Langone evidently does not have would be needed for this.

Anti-colonial jihad is also of interest. Although jihad is technically war against any non-Muslims, in practice it has tended to be fought against Christians. Muslim states have also come into conflict with other varieties of non-Muslims, notably Zoroastrians (in Persia) and Hindus (in India), but other non-Muslim states were generally defeated fairly quickly.61 Only Christian states first resisted complete defeat (between the seventh and fourteenth centuries), 62 then slowly recovered lost territory (between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries) ,63 and finally began to occupy preeminently Muslim territory (between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), 64 giving rise to anti-colonialjihads. All these conflicts are now normally explained in political terms, though reference to "Mohammedan fanaticism" was as frequent in nineteenthcentury Western explanations of anti-colonial jihads as reference to "Muslim fundamentalism" is in today's Western explanations ofIslamistjihads.The relationship between the religious and the political has been endlessly debated, and is further obscured by the complex relationship between religion and identity. Moderate commentators tend to stress the political causes of conflict, which are thought to be amenable to rational resolution, while more hawkish commentators often stress religious causes, deemed less amenable to compromise. Scholars of Middle Eastern politics tend to be moderates, and tend to stress political causes. These certainly exist, and one can argue(as we done  elsewhere) for a political understanding of al-Qaeda.65 However, an insistence on political explanations can also obscure other important explanations, as Kemper's study of the historiography of two anti-colonial jihads shows very clearly. Edgar's study of the role played by inspirational dreams in Islamist jihad is also a timely reminder of the importance of the religious.

 

 

Conclusion and  Implications. Global Jihad P.7.

1 It is now 1,428 lunar years since the Prophet Muhammad's hijra from Mecca to Medina.

2 Michael D. Langone, "Responding to Jihadism: A Cultic Studies Perspective," Cuttie Studies Review 5, no. 2 (2006).

3 Violence may be classified as legitimate or illegitimate, and-separately-as normal or extranormal. These are separate questions. The British police, for example, refer to the "ODC"-the "ordinary, decent criminal"-whose violence may be illegitimate, but is within normal bounds. The violence of a criminal who machine-gunned twenty people while holding up a store would be extranormal as well as illegitimate. The violence of an official executioner who hanged, drew and quartered a convicted criminal would be legitimate, but (by contemporary standards) extranormal. One m.yor theorist of the role of extranormal violence in terrorism is David C. Rapoport, "Messianic Sanctions for Terror," Comparative Politics 20, no. 2 (january 1988): 195-213.

4 Langone, "Responding to Jihadism."

5 Jerrold M. Post, "Hostilite, Conformite, Fratemite: The Group Dynamics of Terrorist Behavior," International Journal of Group Psychotherapy 36, no. 2 (April 1986): 215. He uses Marc Galanter, Richard Rabkin, Judith Rabkin and Alexander Deutsch, "The 'Moonies': A Psychological Study of Conversion and Membership in a Contemporary Religious Sect," American journal of Psychiatry 136, no. 2 (February 1979): 165-170, and Galanter's later articles from 1980 and 1984.

6 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

7 See Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, 127-28. He uses John Lofland and Rodney Stark, "Becoming a World-Saver," American Sociological &view 30, no. 6 (December 1965): 863-74; Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, "Networks of Faith: Interpersonal Bonds and Recruitment to Cults and Sects," American Journal of Sociology 85, no. 6 (May 1980): 1376-95; Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984); William Sims Bainbridge, The Sociology of Religious Movements (New York: Routledge. 1997); and Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2060).

8 Langone, "Responding to Jihadism." He emphasizes that conversion can happen within a religious tradition (the "born-again" model) as well as across traditions, and that such conversions may be less visible, but need not be less significant.

9 Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979).

10 Peters actually distinguishes by historical period: "the classical doctrine," anticolonial jihad, and "modem writings" (primarily what I am calling "defensive jihad") .

11 lain R. Edgar, "The Inspirational Night Dream in the Motivation and Justification of Jihad"

12 Sharia is often translated as "holy law," but is rather more than that. It is very similar to the Jewish halakha. The sharia not only covers most branches of law (from family law through criminal law to commercial law) , but also regulates ritual and ethics, and even clothing and table manners. It derives principally from the Quran and hadith, but also makes use of analogy and certain forms of reason, and takes account of consensus and precedent. In Shi'i Islam, the words (akhbar) of the infallible Imams are also a source of the sharia. The sharia is recorded in the writings of religious scholars, who disagree among themselves on (usually minor) points, but exists independently of these writings-rather as historical truth exists independently of the writings of historians.

13 Colin Turner, "Reconsidering Jihad: The Perspective of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi," in this issue.

14 John Buchan, Greenmantle (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916 and subsequent editions) reflects these worries.

15 An exception is the eighth-century scholar Sufyan al-Thawri.

16 See John H. Hanson, "Jihad and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community: Non-violent Efforts to Promote Islam in the Contemporary World," November 2007 issue of Nova Religio.

17 For the 'Jihad of the pen," see Hanson, "Jihad and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community;" for "metaphorical jihad," see Turner, "Reconsidering Jihad."

18 Michael Kemper, "The Changing Images of Jihad Leaders: Shamil and Abd al-Qadir in Daghestani and Algerian Historical Writing," November 2007 issue of Nova Religio.

19 Among these are the Sudanese Republican Brothers of Mahmud Muhammad Taha; almost all neo-modernist or "progressive" groups do something of the kind.

20 Some scholars (for example, Rapoport in "Messianic Sanctions") classify premodern groups such as the Sicarii as terrorists. The Sicarii do indeed resemble modem terrorists very closely, but since there are few if any more such examples for the next two thousand years, the Sicarii should perhaps be classified as no more than early precursors of a much later phenomenon.

21 Most notably, Hasan al-Banna. The classification of capitalism as an ideology rather than an economic system is one indication of the leftist orientation of these Islamists.

22 One of the most interesting criticisms of lslamism as ideology have been made by two Iranian intellectuals who were formerly active and prominent supporters of the Islamic Revolution, Daryush Shayegan and Abdol Karim Soroush. Among Sunnis, similar points have been made by Nasr Abu Zayd and Muhammad Arkoun.

23 It is often argued that the term is entirely inappropriate. Some 99.9 percent of Muslims accept the inerrancy of the scriptures, and the Islamic equivalent of "higher biblical criticism" is probably known to only 0.1 percent of Muslims. In a sense, then, all Muslims are fundamentalists, in which case the term means little.

24 Used loosely, "fundamentalism" might describe the rigorous literalism of the Wahhabis or the increasingly mainstream neo-Salafi "orthodoxy" of contemporary Arab countries. The contemporary Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia combines a strong emphasis on the religious nature of the state in principle with a clear division of political and religious authority in practice. Arab neo-Salafis hold a wide variety of political views. Modernists include both the mature Muhammad Abduh's accommodating relationship with power, and Ali Shariati's "Islamized Marxism," as it is sometimes characterized.

25 It was, arguably, more democratic than its non-Islamist rivals. See Mehran Kamrava, "Pseudo-Democratic Politics and Populist Possibilities: The Rise and Demise of Turkey's Refah Party," British Journal of Middle Eastem Studies 25, no. 2 (November 1998): 275-301.

26 Anti-colonial jihadists also focused on implementing the sharia, as Kemper shows, but more as a legal system than as an ideology. In the classical doctrine, implementing the sharia is not a concern: it is assumed to be the ruling law anyhow.

27 He declined the invitation.

28 The definition of "terrorism" is extremely controversial, largely because of the implications that any definition has for the legitimacy or illegitimacy of many groups and causes. This essay is not seeking to advance any new definition, but rather to indicate one important factor that might be considered in a definition.

29 This distinction is applied to Islam in Mark Sedgwick, "Establishments and Sects in the Islamic World," in New Religious Movements in the 21st Century: Legal, Political, and Social Challenges in Global Perspective, ed. Phillip Charles Lucas and Thomas Robbins, 283-312 (New York: Routledge, 2004). "Establishments and Sects" is a somewhat revised version of "Sects and Politics," Nova Religio 6, no. 1 (October 2002): 165-73.

30 Jerrold M. Post makes a distinction between groups "committed to the destruction or overthrow of their own government" and "nationalist-separatists," suggesting that the former wants "to destroy the world of their parents" while the latter "are retaliating against society for the hurt done to their parents." Post, "Hostilite, Conformite, Fraternite," 212-13. This distinction works better for the West than elsewhere in the world. In a democratic Western country, the state may be identified with the consensus to which parents subscribe. In the nondemocratic Arab world, the state is generally perceived (with some justification) as responsible for hurt done to all, just as an occupying power is.

31 "America's Image Slips," Pew Global Attitudes Project Report 252, 13 June 2006.

32 Langone, "Responding to Jihadism," interprets similar data rather differently, in an attempt to show that there is no "clash of civilizations." He starts with reassuring survey data gathered among Muslims in America. Mter noting that "obviously, the residents of Muslim nations may hold very different views from Muslims living in Detroit," he finds cOlnfort in Pew data indicating that high percentages of Muslims in the Muslim world consider "Islamic extremism" a threat, and are in favor of democracy. One problem with this is the question of what respondents understood by "extremism." Another problem is that support for democracy is not the same as support for the United States or-especiallysupport for U. S. foreign policy, at least as it is generally seen from the Muslim world.

33 Mark Sedgwick, "Inspiration and the Origins of Global Waves of Terrorism," Studies in Conflict and 1Crrorism 30, no. 2 (February 2007): 97-112.

34 The nineteenth-century Sudanese Mahdists, for example, were clearly apocalyptic. Strangely, this aspect of what is arguably the single most important event in the history of the Sudan has received almost no attention from scholars. The Mahdists are generally understood in political (usually proto-nationalist) terms, with reference often being made to possible economic motivations. Religious motivation is almost ignored.

35 Langone, "Responding to Jihadism," makes an explicit comparison. However, although he uses the phrase "brainwashing," he defines it in such as way that his comparison includes several interesting insights. The principle objection to his argument is probably his emphasis on the model of the manipulative cult leader.

36 For the relative-deprivation hypothesis, see Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1970); for the narcissism-aggression hypothesis, see John W. Crayton, "Terrorism and the Psychology of the Self," in Perspectives on Terrorism, ed. Lawrence Zelic Freedman and Yonah Alexander, 33-41 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1991); and Richard M. Pearlstein, The Mind of the Political Terrorist (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1991).

37 In fact, the organization of al-Qaeda is so loose that it is often described as a network rather than a group. Perhaps it should really be described as a movement.

38 Jean-Francois Mayer, "Cults, Violence and Religious Terrorism: An International Perspective," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24, no. 5 (September 2001): 364.

39 Bryan R. Wilson, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious Movements in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 1-2.

40 Rex A. Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? (Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1999),35.

41 For the classic "four waves" theory, see David C. Rapoport, "The Four Waves of Modem Terrorism," in Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy, ed. Audrey Cronin and James Ludes (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 46-73. For some suggested modifications to this, see Sedgwick, "Inspiration. "

42 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, "Egypt's Islamic Militants," MERIP Report no. 103 (February 1982): 11.

43 Ibrahim, "Egypt's Islamic Militants," 11-12.

44 Ibrahim, "Egypt's Islamic Militants," 12-13.

45 Many definitions require political objectives of a variety that were not clearly present in the case of Aum Shinrikyo, and were almost certainly absent in the case of the Society of Believers.

46 This is the subtitle of his final chapter, "Exile." Ervand Abrahamian, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989).

47 I. Mazandrani, Mojahed 265 (1985), quoted in Abrahamian, Radical Islam, 243.

48 Elizabeth Rubin, "The Cult of Rajavi," New York Times, 13 July 2003, 6-26.

49 Paul White, Primitive &hels or &volutionary Modernizers? The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (London: Zed Books, 2000),129-61.

50 The Tamil Tigers, for example, almost certainly fall into this category.

51 Klaus Wasmund, "The Political Socialization of West German Terrorists," in Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations, ed Peter H. Merkl (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 191-228.

52 Post, "Hostilite, Conformite, Fraternite," 216, 218.

53 Post, "Hostilite, Conformite, Fraternite," 219.

54 Post, "Hostilite, Conformite, Fraternite," 220.

55 See Catherine Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently: FromJonestown to Heaven's Gate (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000).

56 Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, "Religious Totalism, Violence, and Exemplary Dualism," Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 10-50.

57 Audrey Kurth Cronin, "Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism," International Security 27, no. 3 (Winter 2002/03): 41.

58 Bernard McGinn, Antichrist (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994), 32, quoted in Thomas Robbins, "Religious Movements and Violence: A Friendly Critique of the Interpretive Approach," Nova &ligio 1, no. 1 (October 1997): 9.

59 Langone, "Responding to Jihadism."

60 A  judge once said that he had never even seen a case brought to court without a confession.

61 The Sassanid Empire of Persia was defeated between 637 and 651. The Muslim conquest of most of India primarily took place during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

62 During this period, the Byzantine empire was the principal opponent of various Muslim empires.

63 The Russian empire expanded mostly against Muslim opponents, and the Habsburg empire first lost and then gained against the Ottomans.

64 By 1920, most of the Muslim world was occupied by the British, French, and Russian empires. Italy also held Libya.

65 Mark Sedgwick, "Al-Qaeda and the Nature of Religious Terrorism," Terrurism and Political Violence 16, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 795-814.

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