The term “Fundamentalism” used as a comparative category within the academic study of religion has become problematic. Fundamentalism, is not one comprehensive movement but is, in fact, a phenomenon which encompasses a variety of beliefs, practices, and expectations. This thesis will explore the diversity of several different and distinct fundamentalist movements. I will discuss the natures of four Christian movements that have been labeled “fundamentalist” – Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Reconstructionists, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson – on several key points, eschatology, political philosophy, as well as level of social involvement. I will then turn to fundamentalism as it is used as a category to describe a global phenomenon. I will discuss three different scholarly approaches by turning to the work of Bruce Lawrence, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Bruce Lincoln on the Islamic “fundamentalist” group al- Qaeda. Finally I will argue that the category “fundamentalism” can be best understood in terms of a family resemblance.

Diploma thesis " and Killings Abroad" is dedicated to depiction of employment of armed unmanned aerial administration's officials. The thesis is based on constructivist conception of world affairs isn't employed in order to describe objective realit Obama administration's of "us" and "them", that has proved to be very flexible in this study, underpins legitimization of

The thesis aims to analyze the role of women in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda and determine which factors can account for the differences in their perception of women. Although the phenomenon of terrorism has been the focus of many researchers in the field of international relations, the amount of attention paid to women as perpetrators of terrorist violence is significantly smaller. Both of the studied terrorist organizations follow the radical interpretation of Islam which results in many shared views concerning female roles in society in general and in jihad in particular. However, it is possible to find differences in their opinions of women, especially in relation to a more active involvement in the groups' combat and martyrdom operations. In regards to methodology, comparative case study was chosen as the best possible method to explain these differences. The results of the analysis show that it is the worsening security context and increasing threats to the group's survival that are able to account for the acceptance of female combatants in the case of the Islamic State. On the other hand, Al Qaeda's relatively strong position does not create similar pressure for the group to change its position regarding women. Keywords Terrorism, Role of Women, Islamic State, Al Qaeda

Researchers and policy experts point to key issues and groups such as the Palestinian/Arab Israeli Conflict, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Saudi exported Wahhabism, and, in more recent times, the Iraq wars as being the source of militant Islam in this day in age. However, this perspective ignores key issues and ideals in to how this new form of Islam has emerged in recent decades. For instance, with all the conflicts that have occurred in recent decades, except for the 1979 Revolution in Iran, why have they not yielded Shari'a inspired Islamic states in Yemen, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories and Iraq? Currently the only Islamic states in the Arab world are ones that lay on the Persian Gulf that were established during their independence from colonial rule. One only has to look further east and to the north of the Middle East to see militant Islam taking hold in places like Chechnya, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Waziristan and a host of other areas which do not get the attention from many people in the West. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the years directly after, a political vacuum was formed that received almost no attention from the outside world except for states with historical and cultural similarities. Here Islam has and is being used as a military and political doctrine to accomplish goals and as an ideological base for launching new attacks against its proclaimed enemies. Indeed many of the key theologians and figures have come from the Arab world, but the rise of militant Islam could not have formed with this alone. Many of the fighters on the ground in alQaeda and its direct affiliated groups are indeed not Arabs but come from a wide range of different ethnic groups such as Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Pakistanis who have answered bin Laden's call of lesser jihad against the West. Rather than examining militant Islam through a Middle Eastern perspective, this author wishes to give an alternate view that the current rise of militant Islam in the world is directly associated with the internal political situation of the Greater Caspian Sea Basin and not the Middle East as so many people have proposed in the past. To examine this idea, this author will look extensively at the internal conditions of states that have allowed militant Islam to arise and mature in such a short time span in this often forgotten region. The primary purpose of the proposed paper is to examine the rise of militant Islam through a Caspian Sea region lens rather than a Middle Eastern one. This study will also examine violent groups in various states to understand how groups are able to form and how they differ from each other. Countries ranging from as far as Turkey to the Xinxiang Province in China and from the southern reaches of the Russian Federation to Pakistan will be the primary focus.

There is currently a knowledge gap in terrorism research and in peace and conflict studiesregarding whether international news media use gender normative language when reporting onfemale and male suicide bombers in three different Islamic terrorism contexts. The contexts areAl-Qaeda, the Islamic State and Boko Haram. This thesis aims to highlight how internationalnews media use a language that reinforces gender norms through their portrayal of female andmale suicide bombers in the three mentioned Islamic terrorist contexts. Therefore, this thesisaims to analyze and compare a limited number of news media articles. To achieve the purposeof the study, a discourse analysis combined with a feminist post-structuralist theoreticalframework via Gentry and Sjoberg's (2015) narratives “mother, monster, and whore”, has beenused as a lens to examine the language use of news media. The study shows that the languageused by international news media reinforces gender norms and creates power relations betweenwomen and men who commit suicide bombing. Furthermore, these results may have policyimplications in terms of suboptimal efforts to combat Islamic terrorist efforts by women.

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Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / Alternate Military Strategy for the War on Terrorism calls for addressing the war as a global insurgency. Addressing the war on terrorism as a Global Insurgency provides an alternative strategic framework for prosecuting the campaign. This study is intended to determine the utility of analyzing the war on terrorism using an insurgency/counterinsurgency conceptual framework. Additionally, the recommendations can be applied to the strategic campaign, even if it is politically unfeasible to address the war as an insurgency. The study is broken down into five chapters: an introduction, explanation of Dr. McCormick’s Counterinsurgency model used for analysis, application of the model to a historical case, application to the war on terrorism, and conclusions. The first half of the study is intended to provide a thorough understanding of Dr. McCormick’s model. This is done by, first providing an overview of the model and, second, applying the model to a historical case: the insurgency in Lebanon following the Israeli invasion in 1982. The second half of the study addresses the current U.S. lead war on terrorism. The counterinsurgency model is applied to the war on terrorism based on the al Qaeda Network and the United States’ vision and mission for the conflict. Ten on terrorism are drawn from the analysis. The final chapter addresses the utility provided by the insurgency/counterinsurgency framework as applied to the war on terrorism. / Major, United States Army

This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive description and analysis of Al-Qaeda affiliates fighting in Syria. The implications for Middle Eastern Security, US foreign policy and Islamic extremism in the future are projected.

In the Islamic world, the term Jihad bears intricate meaning, and its rightful interpretation has occupied many scholars and Muslims across the globe. For some, it relates to the personal struggle that one may have to deal with on a regular basis. For others, the term operates on the basis of a willingness to fight. While the latter interpretation seems to be shared by extremist terrorists of organisations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, the majority of Muslims have an entirely different interpretation of jihad. This essay wishes to delve deeper into this intricate term in order to come closer to an understanding of Jihad. This is done by conducting a qualitative and comparative analysis of three magazines of propaganda: the Ahmadiyya Community, the Islamic State and Al Qaeda respectively. The results of the study showed that the Ahmadiyya Community claim that a vital aspect of jihad is “jihad-of-the-pen”, a concept which aims to educate other people on the peaceful nature of Islam. Because of the wrongful interpretation of Jihad by extremist organisations, the Ahmadiyya Community take to the pen in order to battle these misinterpretations while also wanting to show that Islam is a peaceful religion. Furthermore, they claim that this wrongful interpretation affects the way ordinary law-abiding Muslim citizens are being viewed upon. Moreover, the findings also showed that ISIS and Al Qaeda interpret jihad as being the “jihad-of-the-sword”, whereby it is considered to be the sixth pillar. While ISIS use the concept of jihad to justify its fighting of the disbelievers, including Muslims who deal with ‘Crusader’ Western democracies, Al Qaeda aims their jihad towards the United States, whom they feel are the root to everything terror. The essay concludes with a the notion that research on this topic should focus more on peaceful jihad, the kind of personal and inner struggle that is being advocated by the Ahmadiyya communities. Literature, such as Understanding Jihad, Field of Blood, and The Secret History of Al Qaeda, has all too much tended to the violent-nature of jihad and left the peaceful, inner struggle out of the discussion. More research can be conducted on this topic to further paint the picture of peaceful struggle, which is a struggle that is felt for the absolute majority of Muslims throughout this world.

Othering is central in the rhetoric of both Abu Bakr Naji and Anders Breivik throughout their works. Both authors use it as a device to drive a psychological wedge between the groups of ‘us’ and ‘them’. In the case of Naji, the in group is made up of violence oriented takfiris such as Al Qaeda, but Breivik hoped to appeal to other violence oriented far right groups and individuals, disillusioned with what he perceived to be a slow erosion of ‘traditional’ European life by the far left, feminism and other forces. My research question will revolve around how a use of othering by the authors can reveal what they regard as the major threat to their groups. Superficially, there seem to be many similarities in how each author uses othering to alienate and dehumanise different groups. However, closer inspection reveals entirely different priorities and different methods of othering in play. By examining how othering is used throughout the works, it is possible to see which outside groups are perceived to present the biggest threat to the inside groups and the results are perhaps surprising. Given that The Management of Savagery has been seen as the ISIS strategic manual and the key message throughout the work is try and bring the USA and her allies into a catastrophic war of attrition from which the violence oriented takfiris would rise, I had assumed that the USA, or the ‘Far’ enemy would take the brunt of Naji’s othering drive. Instead, the Shia and all Muslims who are unaligned with Al Qaeda, plus those Muslims closely aligned with the West or Western ideals are the key target for Naji. Likewise, I had expected most of the vitriol from Breivik’s right wing ‘manifesto’ to be directed at Muslim immigrants to Europe. However, his key concern, as evidenced by the othering used throughout his work, is in fact with what he terms ‘cultural Marxists’ – left leaning groups and political parties, which he sees as weakening Europe and allowing outsiders to take over.