Contextualising Jihadi Thought

Global jihadism has been on policy agendas for more than two decades. Since the 9/11 attacks, both transnational jihadi entities such as Al-Qaeda and national or regional militant groups have attracted a great deal of media and scholarly attention. In recent years, policy agendas have increasingly come to include a focus on countering militant jihadi ideologies. Despite this, studies of global jihadism that take the impact of ideas seriously are at a relatively early stage and have yet to fully capture the richness of their social contexts and intellectual universes. Departing from the security studies approaches that have characterised much writing about jihadi groups, this volume aims to engage policy-makers and specialists alike by bridging existing disciplines and areas of study to create a framework for beginning to understand jihadi movements through the study of their ideologies, intellectual histories, political engagements and geographies. The contributors to the volume come from a range of academic disciplines (including history, anthropology, political science, religious studies and area studies), as well as from the worlds of diplomacy and policy research. In addition to studies of globalised contexts and ideologies, the volume also includes detailed studies of jihadi currents of thought and responses to them in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, South-East Asia and Europe.