Identity, Conflict and Politics in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan by Gilles Dorronsoro;Olivier Grojean;

Author:Gilles Dorronsoro;Olivier Grojean;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

SELF- RADICALISATION OF A YOUNG INDIAN JIHADIST IN GREAT BRITAIN

THE QUEST FOR ETHICS

AND LONG-DISTANCE SUFFERING

Aminah Mohammad-Arif

Translated by Adrian Morfee

There are countless ways of studying conflicts based on ethnic, linguistic, and religious differentiation, and their transformation over time (Brubaker and Laitin, 1998; Hobsbawm, 1993; Kalyvas, 2006; Poletta and Jasper, 2001). The entry point chosen here is the “suicide mission” of a young Indian jihadist, Kafeel Ahmad, who, together with an accomplice, planted bombs in London in 2007 and then tried to ram Glasgow airport with a car. The decision to study a single trajectory is not arbitrary; I had, as fate would have it, met and interviewed the (future) jihadist, this before his resort to violence.

Beyond the individual trajectory, the case of this jihadist is interesting for several reasons. First, it highlights the variability of scale at work here, which is symptomatic of a transformation in conflicts of differentiation. Contemporary jihadism primarily pits individual actors (the jihadists themselves) against collective actors (the state and, in some cases, society), and the action, which is pre-eminently individual (Bozarslan, 2004; Elster, 2005; Gambetta 2005), is carried out in the name of an entire community (even though the community in question does not necessarily identify with the action) and of a cause perceived as collective (washing away the humiliation of the Umma). This case also shows that the dynamics of a conflict may be apprehended from a micro-logical angle (the actions of one or two individuals), even though the action has potentially macro-logical repercussions: the feeling of terror—however diffuse it may be—as experienced by the population as a whole, whilst the community as a whole (Muslims) find themselves in the media spotlight, and fear a backlash from the host society (in a diasporic context).

Second, the fact that a young engineer with no known propensity for violence and acting independently of any external framework, which is to say without any exogenous indoctrination, actually carried out these acts is fairly intriguing and raises a certain number of questions. How does one go from a “banal” identity differentiation (an expatriate becoming aware of his or her Muslim-ness in a non-Muslim land) to the stage where the feeling of difference appears to be so insurmountable that it spills over into violence? And is it solely an “exacerbated” awareness of difference that triggers the self-radicalisation and the shift to violence?

Third, it raises methodological questions about the issue of jihadism using suicide missions as a modus operandi. Several authors have rightfully pinpointed the shortcomings of framing it in terms of motivations. For instance, Talal Asad notes that “Trying to pin down motives is difficult […]: when and how did the intention of undertaking a suicide mission come to be formed? Which desire predominated—killing oneself or killing others? […] How does one set about answering such questions if the perpetrator is no longer alive?” (Asad, 2007, 40). As a matter of fact, motivations “may not be clear even to the actor” (Asad, 2007, 64). Besides, hardly any of the typical motivations put

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