Collective emotions and political violence

Front matter

New Approaches to

Conflict Analysis

Narratives of Islamist organisations in Western Europe zw > j Maéva Clément —

Part II: Exploring the performance of collective emotions

3 A theory of emotionalisation in narrative form 81 4 The romantic narrative of Western Islamist organisations 105 5 Narrative emotionalisation and extremism 156 Conclusion 195 Appendices 215 References 241

Index 256

2.1 Group moderation and group radicalisation (main categories per organisation) page 57 nts and relative frequencies by category ahrir Britains activism 63 Muh jiroun’s activism

4.2 mn eke of the case 4-AM 113

2.1 Codebook ‘Group moderation and group radicalisation’ page 53 22 en ution of coding frequency per organisation

60 73

Ce od book a Narrative’ with main category, category, and code 108 4.2 Code frequency by row at the level of categories (moderate cases highlighted) 110 4.3 Number of coded segments in cases of radicalisation vs cases of moderation (Rom: f 118

4.4 Relative frequencies of hei main narrative categories by case 119 5 Sue freq u the cases of radicalisation/extremism

Abbreviations

AM al-Muhajiroun

DWR Die Wahre Religion

EZP Einladung zum Paradies e.V.

GIMF Global Islamic Media Front HT Hizb ut-Tahrir

HTB Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain

IS Islamic State

ISIL Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria MAB Muslim Association of Britain MI Millatu Ibrahim

OBM Omar Bakri Mohammed

Acknowledgements

This book is about the collective emotions that bind political actors to specific understandings of (world) politics. The motivation to study political activism and violence under the prism of emotions rose from a place of curiosity and an observation. The discourse on organised political violence in the early and mid-2010s was still dominated by hyper-subjectivist accounts of ‘radicalisation’ and operated on a narrow understanding of rationality to account for individual motivations. I was curious about other motivations, experiences, and ways to make sense of changes in beliefs and attitudes — at the collective level. Conversely, the discourses and images produced by organised political actors involved in such processes were largely imagined under the prism of ‘propaganda’, ‘terrorist messaging’, and ‘strategic narratives’. It seemed to me that, much as other political actors, non-state actors engaging in (the justification of) political violence would talk and write about themselves and others in complex ways that cannot be reduced to ideological precepts or strategic discourses.

Working at the time on the meaning of social recognition for Islamist organisations in a Western European context, I was inspired by the idea found across theories of recognition that being recognised by others fulfils a basic emotional need. This holds true for individuals and collectives. This project thus began as an endeavour to study emotional needs as expressed by organised actors turning to political violence. While the book focuses on non-state agency in the context of Islamist activism in Western Europe in recent decades, its argument is by no means restricted to non-state (Islamist) actors. Socio-political discourses and practices of all kinds draw on the politics of emotions and this calls for an epistemic shift in the way we approach (world) politics.

This book would not have been possible without the intellectual environments from which the first idea emerged, later took form, received feedback, matured, and was ultimately couched into a book. I wish to thank the Political Science community of the Sorbonne University, Sciences Po Paris, the Goethe University Frankfurt and Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation x Acknowledgements of Normative Orders’, my former colleagues and other faculty members at the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, and the team at the Chair of International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies at Osnabriick University.

I am deeply grateful to Anna Geis, Thomas Lindemann, Hanna Pfeifer, Katarina Ristić, Eric Sangar, Gabi Schlag, Ulrich Schneckener, and Reinhard Wolf for their helpful feedback and sound advice on various parts of the book.

I wish to thank Janusz Biene, Claudia Dantschke, Patrick Möller, and Nina Wiedl for their generous insights into the German Islamist scene. Special thanks go to Patrick for generously granting me access to some of the audio and video material for this book.

I also wish to thank the Politics and International Relations editor for Manchester University Press, Rob Byron, and the co-editor of the New Approaches to Conflict Analysis series, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, for their enthusiasm for the book, as well as the reviewers for their insightful comments. The publication of the book in open access was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - DFG project number 507194873).

Finally, I am deeply grateful for the emotional support from my family and friends. I deeply thank my mother and my grandmother, Françoise and Fernande, for giving me the opportunities that have brought me here today. Special thanks go to the dear friends who have encouraged me at various times during this project, especially Aline, Anne-Cécile, Aurore, Eric, Janne, Jean-Francois, and Soléne. I also wish to thank Jutta and Martin for their thoughtful enquiries about the project’s progress. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Janusz, my partner, for his emotional and intellectual support, patience, and unwavering confidence in this project.

Note on the text

In Part I of the book, quotes from the data are referenced by organisation and date (e.g. HTB, 21.10.2002). After the reconstruction of phases of activism in Chapter 2 and subsequent delineation of cases (see summarising table 2.4, p. 75), quotes from the data are thereupon referenced by case and date. Each case refers to an organisation and a phase of activism. For example, Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain’s first phase of activism over the period of study is shortened to 1-HTB.

Please note that the publishing dates of the texts by UK-based organisations are predominantly complete. The German-based organisations present a small number of texts, audios, and videos for which the publishing day could not be reconstructed; they are referenced per month and year.

Quotes from the data in German were translated by the author into English. For further information about transcription and translation, as well as the system for representing and quoting the data, please see Appendix D (pp. 238-240).