A Socio-Legal Analysis of Jihad

Since many offensive and defensive wars or acts of terrorism, such as the atrocities of 11 September in the United States and the July 2005 bombings in London, are committed under the banner of Islam and the duty of jihad, it is important to shed some light upon the Islamic laws of war in general, and the controversial concept of jihad in particular. This article traces the origins of, and rationale for, the use of force within the Islamic tradition, and assesses the meaning and evolution of the contentious concept of jihad within its historical context. Following an analysis of the opposing doctrinal views on the potential implications of jihad, the study argues that the concept of jihad should not be interpreted literally, but be adjusted in accordance with new historical and international conditions, and conducted by peaceful means, rather than by the sword.

Right to War in the Islamic Tradition:Jihad and its Compatibility with Modern International Law (will be submitted to the publisher in April 2014)

In the last century, Islam drew the world’s attention though such phenomena as the Islamic revolution in Iran, the fierce Muslim resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the assassination of Egypt’s President Sadat by a radical Islamic group. But it was when Osama Bin Laden and his organization Al Qaeda were established to have been behind the 11 September attacks in the US, the age-old images of Islam, the fanatical and belligerent religion threatening what the Western world stands for, were revitalized. The impact of 9/11 attacks was so great that even balanced portrayals of Islam were eclipsed by stereotypical images of a fundamental, anti-Western and warmongering religion that bore the hallmarks of medieval prejudices and rhetoric. The popular image tailored for the Western audience reflected Islam as monolithic, intrinsically aggressive, and determined to engage in religious wars against the interests and values of the Western civilisation.
This book intends to help reduce, at least to a reasonable degree, the impact of sweeping, and at times tendentious, generalisations about Islamic laws of warfare. The main purpose of this book is to place the legal, cultural and historical practices of Islamic wars in their broader socio-political contexts, thereby establishing that there has been no undisputed understanding of what defensive or aggressive warfare entails in Islam, whether in doctrine or in practice.

Islamismo e terrore: un grande Jihad contro il senso comune (essay)

What implies the conversion to fundamentalist Islam? What are the repercussions and implications of ‘political Islam’ in specific contexts? The relation between Islam, democracy and violence is often represented in a reductive or simplistic way. In order to contribute to a reasoned debate on these pressing questions, this essay covers some key dynamics stemming from long-term ethnographic observation regarding the conversion to neo Salafism among Arab Bedouin citizens in southern Israel, placing them in the context of contemporary developments of Islamic political thought. The ethnographic sensitivity, combined with the voices of some eminent Islamic intellectuals, allows to go beyond both the rhetoric of cultural complexity and the common-sense view that Islamic terrorism would be a kind of ‘anti imperialism of the losers’, arguments employed often to contest emerging neo-orientalist discourses. In this sense, the essay states the need to shed light on coordinates and interpretative categories that are not placed in an essentially different but in often unexpected ways.