History Commons^™

Ibn Taymiyya On The Frontier: Renewal, Resistance And Rebellion, Kenneth Meyer

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328 CE) inspired those advancing into battle in his time, and inspires many on battlefields today. He lived on the physical frontier of his state, defended it, and in ideological terms defined it. The jurist is frequently portrayed in our time as an unyielding, hard-line, intolerant theologian and social critic. However, Part One of this work contends that when his positions are examined in the context of his times, a rational, realistic, methodical figure emerges.

Part Two of this thesis reviews the use of Ibn Taymiyya by several mostly well-known activists, Islamic revolutionaries and Jihadists. …

'Here We Start And In Jerusalem We Meet:' The Motivational And Organizational Influences Of Israel's Statehood Ontransnational Salafi Jihad, Charlotte Armistead

Honors Theses

The Israeli occupation of Palestine and its impact on the proliferation and longevity of transnational Salafi jihad is largely underestimated in current literature. In this thesis, I argue that Palestine, defined as both the nation and physical borders before the Balfour Declaration, largely contributed to the twentieth century revival of transnational Salafi jihad and is used by both Al Qaeda and ISIS as liberation and annihilation movements, respectively. In order to assess the motivational and organizational influences of the Israeli occupation of Palestine on transnational Salafi jihad, I examine the works of Abdullah Azzam, a selection of Osama Bin Laden’s …

Tracing Islamic Extremist Ideologies: The Historical Journey Of Jihad From The Late Antique Period To The 21st Century, Nikhil Kanade

CMC Senior Theses

Popular interpretations and academic scholarship tends to emphasize the relationship between jihad, military action, and communal violence. These reinforce a sense that violence is inherent to Islam. Investigations into the contexts where jihad has been deployed highlight how its use is often a call for unity believed to be necessary for political goals. Therefore, in order to deconstruct this belief, this thesis tackles instead the relationship between textual interpretations and historical actions, and how these varied across specific moments in time. The case studies examined range from the initial evolution of a theory of jihad in the late antique world, …

The Death Of Global Jihad : The Origin And Reality Of Islamic Terrorism, David Charles Gardiner

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorism has been propagated as a seemingly unavoidable threat to our daily lives. However, the globally oriented anti-Western jihad movement peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has since been in decline. Across much of Africa and the Middle East, fringe groups have used Islam as a rallying cry to attract supporters who might otherwise dismiss their rather extreme tactics. Many of these groups claim to adhere to al Qaeda's brand of global terror, but they do so largely to obtain financing and support for their individual nationalist agendas. …

Pieces Of A Mosaic: Revised Identities Of The Almoravid Dynasty And Almohad Caliphate And Al-Bayan Al-Mugrib, Rolando J. Gutierrez

CMC Senior Theses

This study seeks to clarify the identities of the Almoravid and Almohad Berber movements in the larger Crusade narrative. The two North African Islamic groups are often carelessly placed within the group identified as “Islam” in discussions about the series of military campaigns that took place not only in the traditional Holy Land but also throughout regions of the Mediterranean such as Spain; this generalized identifier of “Islam” is placed against a much more complex group of generally Christian parties, all of them seen as separate, unique groups under the umbrella identifier of Christianity. This foray into a late 13 …