ABSTRACT
The analysis in this book offers a counter-narrative to the clash-of-civilizations explanation of Islamist extremism. It argues instead that there is nothing distinctly Islamic about Islamist extremism. This is not to offer an apology for Islamist extremism, much less to excuse its violence and brutality. This is to highlight instead that the essence of Islamist extremism cannot be explained in simplistic terms as a reflection of a uniquely barbaric Muslim religious and cultural milieu or as something unique to Islam. The essence of Islamist extremism, I argue, can only be accurately understood by drawing a conceptual distinction between the radical Islamist explanations of violence and the radical Islamist justifications of violence. In its explanations of violence, radical Islamist reason is reflective of existential Hegelian struggles for recognition. That is, radical Islamist rhetoric explains violence in terms of a rejection of the oppression of the self and a rejection of the negation of the self (the ‘self’ defined collectively). While in its justifications of violence, radical Islamist rhetoric is fundamentally consequentialist in reason. That is, while radical Islamist justifications of violence are undoubtedly contextualized within Islamic religious tenets, the references to religious tenets serves the purpose of presenting all actions—including violent actions—in terms of a ‘morality,’ a logic which may be understood in terms of the instrumentality of religion, a phenomenon which itself is universal. As such, the creation of such moral consequentialism, through the aid of references to religious tenets, is not unique to the Islamic religious context but in fact reflective of the classic justifications of violence found throughout history.
