Faisal Devji is a world-renowned scholar on jihadism and serves as a University Reader at St. Antony鈥檚 College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. On September 20, Dr. Devji spoke at the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, for which he is an advisory board member. He delivered a lecture within the context of an ISIS propaganda that denounces the . His talk, Understanding ISIS: The Essential Guide to Global Terrorism, explained the history of jihadism and dissected a paradox that helps to clarify Islamic State鈥檚 organization and methods: although Islamic thinkers agree that sovereignty is God鈥檚 law, ISIS continuously pushes the law鈥檚 boundaries.
Dr. Devji also delineated the difference between Al Qaeda鈥檚 politicized "mirror-imaging argument" for justifying the group鈥檚 terrorism from ISIS鈥檚 modus operandi: "shattering the mirror" and promising immediate "pleasure and joy" to its sympathizers.
The end of the Cold War brought in a new form of militancy鈥攐ne that is depoliticized. Dr. Devji argues that ISIS thrives on today鈥檚 fragmented sovereignty and unclear politics in creating a new jihadism. In the place of Al Qaeda鈥檚 reciprocal violence that fights the West, ISIS instead focuses "inside," with its near enemies, waging war with "devil worshippers," as explained in the propaganda video.
Dr. Devji provided the Occidental community abstract insight into the evolution and organization of global terrorism. In understanding this transitional phenomenon, as students, we come closer to comprehending today鈥檚 increasingly complex Middle East.
--William Butenschoen