STRATEGY IN SAVAGERY SALAFI JIHADISM AND THE CAUSES OF BRUTAL AND INDISCRIMINATE VIOLENCE

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to answer the critical question of why some Salafi Jihadist groups commit brutal and indiscriminate violence, whereas others don’t. It also explains when these groups decide to move from discriminatory violence to a pattern that appears indiscriminate. While some work exists on the causes of extreme violence by jihadist groups, hardly any research has attempted to explain the variation in violence by Salafi Jihadists. To unravel the causes of such variation by ideologically similar groups, this dissertation proposes a Power-Inheritance theory that synthesizes insights from the study of ideological traditions in Islamic studies and theoretical traditions on power relations in political science. The theory illustrates how divergence in doctrinal interpretation by different Salafi groups leads to variation in violence and posits that such interpretation is more of a political enterprise than a strictly religious one. The framework draws attention to three crucial themes. First is Religious Inheritance (RI), which essentially consists of religious ideas and traditions that get passed down from one generation to another. Second is Group Power Relations (GPR), which looks at politically relevant groups and their access to power, and the third is how RI and GPR interact to shape the interpretation of religious doctrines. The dissertation also proposes a 2x2 matrix that not only explains the variation in the violence but also predicts the pattern of violence a group is likely to produce. The research draws on a trove of police records, including interview reports of arrested jihadists, primary sources in the form of documents, audio and videos produced by Salafi groups, and elite interviews. The empirical analysis includes three cross-regional case studies that involve the study of the behavior of Salafi groups in India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. The Indian case also unravels the religious sources that jihadists in India draw from. The Nigerian case exhibits within case variation that not only country-level sources of biases but also adds robustness to the research.