Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media

Simone Pfeifer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Training Group anschließen-ausschließen: Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks at the University of Cologne. She is a social and cultural anthropologist with a focus on visual, digital and media anthropology. Her research interests include transnational migration and mobility in postmigrant contexts, political violence, religion, and artistic practices, and ethics in (digital) ethnographic research. Her recent publications include Social Media im transnationalen Alltag (2020, transcript), the co-edited volume Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) with Christoph Günther, and the co-edited special section Dark Ethnographies? (ZfE 2021: 146). Christoph Günther is the Principal Investigator of the junior research group Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, their Dissemination and Appropriation in the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Having a background in Islamic Studies, his research interests include religio-political movements in the modern Middle East, visual cultures and iconography, and the sociology of religion. He is the author of Entrepreneurs of Identity: The Islamic State’s Symbolic Repertoire (Berghahn Books, 2022) and has co-edited Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) with Simone Pfeifer. Robert Dörre is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the field of media cultural studies at the department for Theory, Aesthetics and Politics of Digital Media at Ruhr University Bochum. His research interests comprise digital culture and social media, media relations between visibility and violence, affect theory, media as intervening agencies and VR films. In his PhD thesis, he addressed forms of audiovisual self-documentation in social media. The resulting book was published by Büchner-Verlag in 2022 under the title Mediale Entwürfe des Selbst.

• List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword by Salman Sayyid Introduction: Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media Christoph Günther, Robert Dörre and Simone PfeiferPart I Notions of Jihad and The Production of Knowledge1 The Portrayal of Jihadi-Salafism: The Role of Knowledge Production in Fabricating a Global EnemyJaan S. Islam2 Jihad Goes to Court: The Invocation of Islamic Idioms in Terrorism Prosecutions Nicole Nguyen3 ‘Look a certain way in order to resist’: An Analysis of German Short Videos against Islamism Sindyan Qasem4 Criminalising Critical Scholarship: Austria’s Intelligence Service and Islamophobia Studies Farid Hafez5 Will the Real Jihadi Please Stand Up? On ‘Jihadism’ as a Conceptual WeaponDarryl LiPart II Audiovisual Mediations and Formations of Jihad6 Terrorism Education in ISIS’s Use of Children’s Mobile Apps Ahmed Al-Rawi7 From ISIS to the AfD: Ultraist Rhetoric and Visuality in Alt-Orientalist Concurrence Christiane Gruber8 The Sound and Sense of Jihad: Revisiting the Notion of Jihad in Jihadi-themed Arabic Chants Kurstin Gatt9 Documenting the Yazidi Survival of Genocide: Aesthetics and Politics between Sabaya, the Murad Code and The Last Girl Sebastian KöthePart III Ethnographic Perspectives on Imaginations and Materialities10 Talking Jihad: The Interactive Construction of a Racialised Threat in the Netherlands Martijn de Koning11 Fragments of Utopia: Political and Religious Emigrations from France to SyriaHamza Esmili12 Acting with God: Divine Interruption and Practices of Jihad Anja Kublitz13 Secular Normativity in Anti-jihad Discourse in France Aïcha BounagaPart IV Affective Archives – Enduring Sounds and Images14 An Epilogue of Images: On Theorising and Archiving Daesh’s Videos of Violence Robert Dörre15 Remediating Images of War: Cultural Practices behind Syrian Digital Archives after 2011 Enrico De Angelis and Yazan Badran16 Critical Spectatorship, Violent Care Kevin B. LeeAfterword: One Person’s Terrorist Is Another Person’s Freedom Fighter, One Person’s Jihad Is Another’s Crusade: Reflections on the Tokyo Reels Film Festival by Subversive Film at the Documenta 15, 2022 Wendy M. K. ShawIndex

A rich collection of thought-provoking contributions on jihadism and its place in Western discourse.