Hybrid pathways to resistance in the Islamic world: a study of Islamist groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Mali and Libya

HYRES has studied the interaction between Islamist movements and the state in the cases of Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Mali, and was designed to answer the following question: Why do some Islamist groups pursue their political and religious project within the state to which they belong while other Islamist groups refuse to accept these borders, seeking instead to establish new polities, such as restoring the Islamic Caliphate? While the use of violence appears to be independent of whether groups have a state-oriented or a transnational focus, four pathways to resistance for Islamist groups can be identified: state-oriented and non-violent; state-oriented and violent; transnationally oriented and non-violent; and transnationally oriented and violent. The HYRES research project has explored how the pathways chosen by protest groups vary and adapt to local, domestic and international contexts. To illustrate, it is very different to be an Islamist group in present-day Syria than it was ten years ago. Islamist movements in Tunisia, the only Arab country to be ranked as Free by Freedom House, can actually have a chance of gaining a seat or even executive power when venturing into elections, while this is not the case for different reasons in countries such as Syria, Mali and Libya. This means that the number of opportunities that are available to a certain extent is determined by context. However, context alone does not explain why the Muslim Brotherhood in Sisi?s Egypt, facing a very closed political system, has not resorted to violence, while, Tunisia, known for its inclusive political system, has exported the highest number of foreign fighters per capita in the Arab world to jihadi theatres abroad. These dilemmas are further explored both in Tine Gade?s forthcoming book - Urban Sunnism and the Sunni Crisis, Tripoli 1920-2020, Cambridge University Press (2021) and a special issue of Third World Thematics - Hybrid pathways to resistance in the Islamic World edited by Morten Bøås and Tine (also forthcoming 2021. The Contributors use different middle-range theories to account for a group?s choice of pathway. For example, some borrow innovative concepts from political anthropology, like theories about the Big Man and tactical and strategic agency to analyse leadership in Islamist movements in Iraq and Mali. Other papers apply a Bourdieu-inspired analysis of discursive fields to account for the battle of ideas and distinct versions of nationalism in Iraqi Kurdistan. In a context like the Kurdish one, all actors must somehow relate to nationalism, thus the emergence of the concept of Kurdish Islam. What the HYRES project therefore brings to the fore is critical analyses that not only empirically shows important changes that are taking place within the contested field of Islamism, but also how grounded empirical analysis leads to novel and innovative re-conceptualisations. We find that it is the fusion of politics and religion in the Islamic world that will continue to inform the politics of people, place and state in predominantly Muslim countries in the short to medium term horizon. By the inclusion of cases from North Africa and the Sahel, HYRES has also broadened the range of studies of Islamism from the core Middle East countries to the new battlegrounds of contestations between states and Islamism, but also within Islamism in North Africa and the Sahel

Prosjektet har viser at islamistiske grupper ikke kan forståes som lineære bevegelser, men som dynamiske grupper som forholder seg til og påvirkes av konteksten rundt dem. De studiene vi har utført av ulike islamistiske grupper i Libanon, Libya, Mali og Irak har gitt forskergruppen bak HYRES en unik innsikt i både hvordan slike grupper opererer i ulike kontekster og i hvorledes deres indre liv påvirkes omgivelser og den interne dynamikken dette skaper innad i gruppen. Dette har hatt betydelig innvirkning både på hvordan vi forstår disse gruppene og deres målsetninger. Slik sett har denne forskningen gjort hos bedre i stand til å produsere kunnskap som har stor nytteverdi både for videre forskning og for vår evne til å bidra til kunnskapsbasert politikk på dette området. Et eksempel på denne effekten er at arbeidet med HYRES og den kompetanse dette har bygd har hatt stor verdi i det EU-Horizon 2020 finansierte prosjektet PREVEX som ledes av HYRES prosjektleder Morten Bøås.

This project analyses state-citizen relationships in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Mali after 2011. Specifically, it will answer the following question: Why do some Islamist groups and individuals identify with the existing, territorial state, while others turn their back on the state and wish to change state borders and establish a transnational Islamic emirate? The project will retrieve new data through ethnographic analysis, informed by the contentious politics literature. We will examine four cases, structured in two work packages (WP). WP1 consists of the two cases Lebanon and Iraq, while WP2 includes the cases of Mali and Libya. In each case, we will study two or three groups, often themselves subject to important internal debates. The literature on the pathways of Islamist groups is insufficient because it focuses too closely on structural, generic variables such as network theory (Denoeux 1993) or domestic variables such as the extent of inclusion and exclusion of certain population groups. Our project will primarily examine three complementary explanatory factors to explain why a social movement adopt either a state-centred, or conversely a transnational, framing. The first is intra-Islamist rivalry. Secondly, we will examine the logics of (interaction) and situation. Thirdly, the transnational diffusion of repertoires of contention will be analysed. The study will use a systematic, comparative analysis and propose a general conceptual framework, informed by recent advances in the contentious politics literature. By identifying variation across our cases, we seek to contributing to the theoretical literature on social movements in non-democratic contexts. The research question will answered by ethnographic field research (semi-structured interviews) in Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, Mali and Libya, complemented by an analysis of on-line primary sources and literature studies.