ABSTRACT
Russian jihadism is, from this biographical perspective, a conglomerate of individual pathways to violence, and in its textual output, a mosaic of different projects that all reflect the peculiarities of the individual author. The “second generation” including Astemirov, Buriatskii, and Vakhitov is slightly different. The chapter discusses the self-made character of their jihadi legitimacy-production was the reason for their popularity in the Caucasus and beyond. Characteristic is that their texts centered on jihad, not on Islam as a religion, or on how a perfect Islamic society or the desired Islamic state should look like. Central is the act of resistance, justified and sanctified with references to religion, that pushes the authors toward a “transgressive sanctity,” or violence sanctified by faith. Homegrown historical models including the Islamic insurgencies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were obviously much more powerful foils for identification than any references to foreign, let alone global, models.
