Reading and Misreading ISIS

An excerpt from Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou’s latest book

On March 29th, 2018, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou will give a talk entitled "Conceptualizing the Islamic State" in the Sociology Lecture Series of The New School. The talk will begin at 6:00 p.m. in the Wolff Conference room (D1103) of Albert and Vera List Academic Center (6 East 16th Street, the 11th Floor.)  Q&A What prompted you ...
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Reading and Misreading ISIS

Terrorism and Talk

Everyday Life and Public Seminar after the Explosion Under the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the Election of Doug Jones and “Tax Reform”

I sat down to breakfast with Naomi, my wife: she reading the paper, we listening to the news bulletins. They were still vague. It was not known yet what the cause of the explosion was. At one point, the news announcer slipped and called the incident an attack, but then ...
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Normalizing the State of Emergency

France’s recent anti-terror legislation

This measure codifies what has been an ongoing state of emergency, originally enacted by the Socialist President Francois Hollande in the wake of the attacks of November 2015. Since then, the state of emergency has been extended six more times in the face of ten more attacks, reinforcing what has ...
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The Myth of the Clash Between Islam and the West Revisited

ISIL, media, and adaptation

For instance, when first putting forward their analysis of the myth of the Clash of Civilizations (Bottici and Challand, 2013) in 2009, Chiara Bottici and Benoît Challand analyzed the first 20 images that appear when the word al-gharb (West) is searched on Google images[1]. Among the findings, 16 out 20 ...
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The New-Old Terror Wave in Europe (Part 3)

A Comparison of European Terrorism Cycles

Suicide bombers have, in a way, replaced car bombs or improvised explosive devices (IED) by themselves. The use of this tactic is also a reaction to learned experience by European security agencies. Car bombing dominated the previous wave in the United Kingdom, Spain, and France. This made police forces alert ...
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The New-Old Terror Wave in Europe (Part 2)

A Comparison of European Terrorism Cycles

It seems, then, that Europe is currently in a new expansionist phase of this latest cycle of terror. Putting aside the isolated case of the El Descanso restaurant bombing in Madrid in 1985 by the Lebanese Islamic Jihad, Jihadi violence reached Europe in late 1994 when the Armed Islamic Group ...
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The New-Old Terror Wave in Europe (Part 1)

A Comparison of European Terrorism Cycles

Terrorism, understood as non-state political violence that inflicts physical harm on people and property outside of combat or occupied regions with the aim to frighten society and force a state to enact or change certain policies[1], is far from being a new phenomenon in Europe. In fact, it has been ...
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After 9/11 — What?

A Historian Contemplates the Future of Memory

My editorial colleague Jeff Goldfarb told me yesterday that he was going to re-publish one of his reflections from September 11, 2001, and I decided to do so too. But I didn't become a blogger until 2006, and then, it appears -- perhaps because, however schmaltzy, commemorations of the attack ...
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The Clash of Civilizations

From Myth to Reality?

Recently, an Egyptian friend of mine posted on Facebook that an Egyptian friend of his tried to apply for an internship in France. The reply he got was shockingly disappointing and not expected at all. Without mentioning the company’s name, it said: “Thanks for your interest in an internship… I ...
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The Clash of Civilizations

Remember the Bastille

Terror, Terrorism, and Jihadist Capitalism

Introduction: Terror and Terrorism On Friday, June 19th, a man rammed into a police car on the Champs Elysses. Though the driver died before he could carry out further violence, it was evident that his intention was to commit a larger-scale attack; inside the incinerated vehicle, investigators found explosives, ammunition, and ...
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Remember the Bastille