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Zaheer Kazmi discusses the key points from his new article in BISA journal Review of International Studies (RIS), titled ‘Radical Islam in the Western Academy’.The article aims to interrogate the labelling of Islam and Muslim actors as ‘radical’ as a particular scholarly practice. Zaheer argues that radical Islam is under-theorised and over-determined as a scholarly category.

For over forty years, radical Islam has been one of the most clichéd expressions in Western political discourse. From around the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, it has been invoked habitually by policymakers, the media and academics alike. At the heart of justifications for war, it has also dominated analysis of global terrorism and political violence since 9/11. Yet it has often displayed a ‘we know it when we see it’ quality, evident not only in assumptions that underpin its usage in the lexicon of Western security policies but in settled genealogies of ‘Islamism’ or ‘jihadism’ recycled routinely by scholars across various disciplines. Rather than being self-evident, however, analysis of radical Islam functions more as a kind of Rorschach test onto which assorted interpretations of ‘radicalism’ and ‘Islam’ are projected. In my article for RIS, I address the vagaries of radical Islam’s widespread presence in the Anglophone academy by treating the labelling of Islam and Muslim actors as radical as a particular scholarly practice.

Scholars of radical Islam tend to pay less attention to what radicalism means than what Islam is. To put this another way, despite growth in studies of ‘global’ movements and thought, there has been little reflection on radicalism as a comparative concept in the study of global politics. In the history of political and international thought, for instance, radicalism remains a category defined by, if no longer entirely confined to, its Euro-American intellectual heritage. At the same time, the study of radicalization in the behavioural sciences turns the focus of concepts long-applied to historical movements in Europe to the more recent exigencies of global Western counter-terrorism concerns. In this milieu, radicalism’s Eurocentric character tends to be assumed rather than examined when allied to Islam. It might even be said that, as a scholarly category applied universally, radicalism has no content beyond its Western understanding which is itself variable because it has no fixed definition even though the term is used so profusely.

My article essentially does two things. First, by treating radicalism as a meta-concept it identifies four discourses of radicalism – originating in the Western academy to address Western contexts and phenomena – which scholars have used to describe radical Islam: Euro-radicalism, which I identify with the European left and critical theory, fundamentalism, radicalization and liberalism. They show how the content of radical Islam has been variously determined by specific concepts attendant to each discourse. This can reveal both radical Islam’s malleable and composite nature and the enduring Eurocentrism at work in defining it, including in critical and post-Western approaches which unreflectively import certain concepts, such as radicalism, into the analysis of non-Western traditions, while critiquing others. Second, I point to the apologetic recovery of Islam which is apparent in critical approaches to radical Islam, especially critical accounts in IR since 9/11. These approaches often deploy narratives of Islamic legal, historical or ethical orthodoxy to counter Orientalist depictions of Islam – narratives which are, however, insufficiently attentive to marginal and heterodox voices which fall outside hegemonic conceptions of Islamic normativity. In doing so, they also betray paradoxical affinities with proponents of liberal Islam who see it as a vehicle for promoting Islamic moderation in the face of militancy. All of this also suggests that critical approaches to Islam should not themselves be immune from ideological critique. Below, I give a brief overview of four distinct ways radical Islam is conceptualised in the Anglophone academy.

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posted by f.sheikh

Have we witnessed another Sputnik moment? The Financial Times has reported that China tested a hypersonic missile this summer, though China denies this. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, compared the test to that pivotal event during the Cold War: “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment,” he said, “but I think it’s very close to that.”

Milley should dust off his history books. The Chinese test has nothing in common with Sputnik, and claiming that it does feeds a dangerous paranoia growing in Washington these days.

To recall, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the planet, on October 4, 1957. Both the United States and U.S.S.R. had been planning to launch satellites into space for years, and the fact that Moscow got there first was a huge shock to Americans. Coming in the wake of multiple powerful Soviet nuclear tests, Sputnik signaled that in the next frontier, space, the Soviets were ahead.

Sputnik was a revolution in the space race. Hypersonic missiles, on the other hand, are old news. A hypersonic missile travels at five times the speed of sound or faster. Starting in 1959, the United States and the Soviet Union have deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles that travel more than 20 times the speed of sound. Even Germany’s V-2 rockets, first launched against Paris during the last phase of World War II, flew at close to hypersonic speeds. Cameron Tracy, a Stanford University scientist and expert on the topic, has pointed out that hypersonic weapons are neither faster nor stealthier than ICBMs. Oh, and by the way, according to Financial Times reporting, the Chinese missile missed its target by about 24 miles.

As author and journalist Fred Kaplan notes, it’s possible that the test was China’s attempt to nullify the United States’ vast missile defense system. But that system, as he points out, is an expensive white elephant that failed three of its last six tests despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on it to date. Perhaps that is why the Pentagon hasn’t tested the system since March 2019. Even if the system had perfect aim, it could still be rendered useless with small, asymmetrical measures, such as simply firing two missiles at the same time.

Alas, don’t expect science and facts to have much sway in this discussion. That’s because there is now a bipartisan consensus in Washington: We are coming dangerously close to a new Cold War. For the Pentagon, it’s an opportunity: Raising fears about a huge and tech-savvy enemy is a surefire way to guarantee vast new budgets that can be spent countering the enemy’s every move, real or imagined.

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posted by f.sheikh

One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.

He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.

After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.

Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.

After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.

A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.

Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.

“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.

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posted by f.sheikh