Jihadism is different – well-meaning rehabilitation programmes don’t work
The second edition of Dabiq, the in-house magazine produced by the Islamic State, which ran for 15 issues between 2014 and 2016, is entitled “The Destruction of Shirk”. In early Islamic scripture,Shirk is a gloss term for the crime of idolatry and association with other faiths. For the pre-medieval tribes of the Arabian peninsula Shirk would have had an important social function – in an era of constant low-level conflict, consorting with other tribal groups, itinerant Jews and Christians for example, could have had dangerous consequences.
In the ISIS magazine, Shirk is used as a scriptural justification for the wanton destruction of cultural artefacts. A spread is devoted to the blasting of a shrine in Mosul. It is labelled The Tomb of the Girl. According to local traditions, this is where a girl is buried who died of a broken heart. According to some traditions, it was the tomb of the 12th century medieval historian Ali Ibn al-Athir, who wrote an eleven volume history of the Islamic world and travelled with the great general Saladin.
There is no better metaphor for the character of Jihadism, or neo-fundamentalism in general, a global phenomenon found in many faith traditions, including similarly world-rejecting groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, because it illustrates the extent to which Jihadists inhabit a world of moral evil. “Darkness visible,” as Milton put it, but all the more attractive for it – to cleanse the world of all things and then to dwell in it, alone, free of attachments, free of qualms, is the ultimate dream for committed Jihadists. It is what lends evil-doing its attractiveness. It is a fascination that has always attracted the maladjusted and the temperamentally vulnerable.
“Was there no escape – anywhere – for anyone? It was worth murdering a world,” says Graham Greene’s diabolic Pinkie in his novel Brighton Rock. Or Accattone, the eponymous protagonist of Pasolini’s exploration of the small-time gang violence on the outskirts of Rome: “Either the world kills me, or I kill it.”
I cannot think of a more fitting epithet for contemporary Jihadism – “It was worth murdering a world”. Last week, we in Britain were subjected to another act of terror carried out in its name. The London Bridge attacker Usman Khan’s deep associations with groups run by the radical preacher Anjem Choudary including Islam4UK and al-Muhajiroun reveal a young man committed to the Jihadist project. The ecology for violent Jihadism in the UK is relatively small – there are key players and groups generally well known to the security services – but it is has produced some of the world’s most violent terrorists. Several of high-profile figures in global Jihadism have had direct personal links with Choudary – Khan had his personal mobile number.
Choudary was released from prison on licence last year after serving less than half his five year prison sentence. Any idea that the British state has somehow been too harsh on Choudary and his followers is nonsense.
Rehabilitative justice programmes, like Learning Together, do work when dealing with other categories of criminal. There is plenty of empirical evidence to show that rehabilitative justice of that kind is overwhelmingly desirable, can genuinely change lives and these projects are worthwhile.
However, it is a quite separate issue to the project of deradicalization, if it can be pursued at all. Jihadism is different. It is not so much an ideology or even a disposition towards faith, although it can be articulated in those terms, it is, for its committed adherents, a pure distillation of moral evil.