New Texts Out Now: Ahmad Dallal, The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, and 'the Extinction of the Grayzone'

New Texts Out Now: Ahmad Dallal, The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, and "the Extinction of the Grayzone"

New Texts Out Now: Ahmad Dallal, The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, and "the Extinction of the Grayzone"

By : Ahmad Dallal

Ahmad Dallal, The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, & "the Extinction of the Grayzone”Washington DC: Tadween Publishing, 2017. 

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Ahmad Dallal (AD): Much has been written about ISIS. Most studies address specific aspects of the movement’s activities, but fall short of identifying the overall ISIS project that is used to homogenize and integrate the diverse constituencies targeted by ISIS. In this essay I try to identify the key features of the larger project of ISIS, its political theology. To my mind, a radical critique of the ISIS project cannot rely on simply highlighting the weakness of the legal interpretations used by ISIS, or the price ISIS exacts in human life and suffering, but must interrogate the larger project within which the ISIS legal arguments are embedded, and within which its violence is justified.

J:  What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

AD: The essay addresses the political theology of ISIS, that is, the distinctive feature of the ISIS political and religious project. Among other things, the essay addresses the question of religiosity of ISIS; the genealogy and architecture of the religious and political concepts deployed by ISIS; the differences between ISIS and other contemporary jihadi movements; and the way ISIS justifies its actions. The essay draws on the literature that theorizes the global Islamic strategy of jihad, including writings shared with other jihadi movements, as well as writings specific to ISIS.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

AD: I have written previously on Islamic thought and movements, but while my earlier work is on the pre-modern period, this essay deals with a contemporary movement.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

AD: Students of modern Islamic movements; contemporary historians and political scientists. The general public, as well as anyone interested in contemporary events.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AD: I am currently finishing a book on traditions of reform in eighteenth-century Islamic thought.

 

Excerpt from the book:

Just a few years after their beginning, it now appears that the bold hope engendered by the Arab uprisings is being replaced by fear of the seemingly endless slide toward utter devastation and senseless cruelty. More than any other actor in the contemporary Arab political landscape, ISIS embodies this fear. In a very real sense, ISIS usurped the uprisings’ revolutionary project and aborted many of its promises and achievements.  In this sense, it acts as a counter-revolutionary force, but ISIS also appears to be one of the most effective forces poised to undermine the former order that triggered the uprisings, and this potency is of course evidenced by the fact that the whole world is trying to mobilize to defeat or contain it.

Like all revolutions, the Arab popular uprisings calling for the departure of the heads of states (the famous irhal) can only be illegal from the perspective of the standing legal orders (whether national or international), because a revolution is an experience of authenticity, and not only (and not necessarily) a remedy for injustice or the enforcement of rights. At moments of revolution, legality and legitimacy are not the same; legitimacy at such moments is asserted in the name of a historically contingent “sovereignty” constituted through the revolutionary act itself, but this legitimacy does not automatically result in a new reality; rather, it opens the door to multiple realities and imagined possibilities. Democratic transition is one such possibility, but so is ISIS (and many things in between).

ISIS deploys violence as a way to eliminate the grayzone, to polarize society and recruit marginalized Muslims and convince them to join the Islamic state. According to ISIS, “the time had come for another event— magnified by the presence of the khilafa on the global stage—to further bring division to the world and destroy the grayzone everywhere.” In fact, the ultimate litmus test to judge a jihadi group is its willingness to divide the world into two camps: the camp of Islam and the crusaders or the camp of kufr. ISIS, of course, insists that the caliphal State exclusively embodies the camp of Islam, and laments the wide support by various Muslim and non-Muslim groups of the “cause of oppressed Muslims” in Syria, that implies non-Muslim sympathy with the cause of Muslims, thereby slowing the desired “withering of the grayzone.”

The primary identity and legitimating factor of this new Islamic order, and one that distinguishes it from its other Islamic rivals, is the fact of the State. For this reason, in addition to the war against regimes and non-Muslims and the war against the Shi‘a, the largest ideological battle that ISIS fights is against similar jihadi groups who do not submit to it. In fact, the majority of the writings of the Islamic state, and a significant portion of their fighting, are directed against rival jihadis. According to ISIS, “nothing has delayed victory, and delays it now, more than these [rival jihadi] organizations, because they are the cause of division and disagreement that erode strength.” Also, it would seem that ISIS feels no great need to justify its strategy to the types of Muslims it wishes to recruit: Muslims who already buy into the idea of global jihad against non-Muslims and so called apostate regimes. However, it is much harder to explain to such Muslims why they should fight under the banner of ISIS and not the older al-Qa‘ida.

The caliphate of ISIS is predicated on a model of justice founded on absolute obedience to the self-declared caliph, who happens to prevail, and dissociation from everybody and everything that does not submit to him. Despite superficial attempts to ground its actions in the law, for ISIS the apocalyptic establishment of the caliphate endows the caliph with the ultimate sovereignty that demands unquestioning obedience. The caliph fulfills his role by utilizing all the power at his disposal to “compel people to do what the Shari‘a (Allah’s law) requires of them concerning their interests in the hereafter and worldly life.” This blind and unqualified obedience to the commanding authority of the state and its head turns cruelty and brutality into the very act of worship. 

However, ISIS does more; it twists the Islamic civilizational project and subjugates God’s love and mercy to His justice. It reduces God’s sovereignty to superficial and mechanical renditions of the law, and it makes sacrifice of self and other an aim in itself. Which brings us back full circle to the political theology of ISIS, and the legitimacy it claims at a formative foundational moment where sovereignty derives from God himself and not just from God’s laws.

The author of Idarat al-Tawahhush argues that God sends prophets to alert people to the consequences of their actions; persistence in disobedience to God, and in discarding the guidance brought by prophets, leads to the spreading of corruption, and results in the unleashing of God’s wrath on the unbelievers even if they number in the millions; and God then causes enormous suffering befitting of His might and of His wrath over the violation of his sanctions, a torment of suffering that restores the justice that is absent from earth. As such, jihad becomes “more merciful to humanity than directly bearing the enormous torment of God. This is why God ordained that those who deserve punishment shall be tormented at the hands of the believers.”

This is a twisted model of prophetic justice, one which contends that God inflicts suffering on a large scale, and that his mercy and compassion are neither through an embodied God who suffers on behalf of humanity, nor through prophets who guide and remind, but through jihad, which afflicts limited pain to avert larger suffering. However, ISIS goes further and combines the immediacy of prophetic justice with a messianic justice that, at the moment of glorifying power and cruelty, celebrates failure as a step towards the return of Jesus and the coming of the mahdi. This opportunistic combination of models of prophetic justice and messianic justice alleviates the burden of having to deliver real justice. ISIS, therefore, sets up a model in which it is not accountable for any results, and without accountability, the ability to posit answers to all possible questions with unyielding certitude requires elimination, as it were, of any doubt and uncertainty. Without doubt and uncertainty, there can be no moral consciousness; hence, the production of a political theology that theorizes ruthlessness and fear.

[Excerpted from The Political Theology of ISIS, with permission of the author (c) 2017.]

 

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.