ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some interviews that conduct in 2014 and 2015 with both actual and potential “jihadis.” It assesses the motivational role that certain “violent passages” of the Qur’an might have played in the life of these jihadis. The chapter focuses on conversations with various jihadis about the interpretation of the sword verse, and also draws upon discussion of other Qur’anic verses and various global socio-political issues. It also focuses on the complex web of interactions that frames any action, and to help them resist the temptation to resort to reductive analysis of social and individual behavior that may outwardly involve a seeming connection between scripture and violence. The kind of “bad-ass-do-goodery” that many people sympathetic to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) display is not created by their reading of pro-ISIS propaganda but rather pre-exists such reading, even if in a nebulous form.
