The Terrorist in Search of Humanity

Reviews / Votes

'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, '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.' . . . 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'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 *