The purpose of this thesis is to examine how different news agencies around the world portray the Islamic State, using the beheading of journalist James Foley as a case study. Whether or not media outlets coverage and portrayal of the Islamic State and terrorism differs depending on region and state.  This to investigate or uncover how cultural heritage and political currents might be influencing news agencies portrayal of the Islamic State and its advances. How do different news agencies depict or picture the same events and the terror organizations advances. By using Norman Faircloug’s model for critical discourse analysis three prominent discourses are found. The conclusion is that political currents and cultural heritage does have an influence in media coverage and portrayal; news agencies belonging to different regions portray this terror organization differently but when condemning the event there is a global standardization.

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MSc SECINTEL Independent Study (Dissertation) Jihadism in Italy: an analysis of the Islamic State-inspired radicalisation process of Anas El Abboubi and Maria Giulia Sergio July 2018 Glasgow Student Number: 2267042f Charles Student Number: 12549163 Presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of MSc International Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies (SECINTEL) Word Count: 22354 Supervisor University of Glasgow: Dr Katherine Allison Supervisor Charles University: Dr Emil Aslan Souleimanov MSc SECINTEL Independent Study (Dissertation) ABSTRACT The terrorist group known as IS (The Islamic State) has been remarkably successful in recruiting young European Muslims, including Italians, into joining its armed jihad. IS skilfully uses Islamist narratives to exploit the vulnerability of aggrieved individuals, which raises important questions regarding the role of Islam in the radicalisation process. This dissertation conducts an analytical inquiry into the journey to radicalism of two young Italian jihadists, Anas El Abboubi and Maria Giulia Sergio, in an attempt to present qualified supportive evidence for the claim that Islam is used as a justification factor rather than being the primary motivator in the adoption of radical beliefs. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the...

This work examines how two Islamist forces, the Islamic State and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, use Islamic messages and themes in their propaganda and narrative in an effort to persuade others to their point of view. It does so through the lens of propaganda analysis and narrative theory, and focuses specifically on the efforts of these groups to create an imaginary "model Muslim" for persuadees to emulate, the use of religiously loaded terms, and the intertwining of government and Islamic themes to create Islamic messages with the intent to persuade.

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Since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the expulsion of the Ba’ath Party, sweeping political reforms dramatically changed the Republic of Iraq and how government protects and manages its cultural resources. The slow rise of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the rapid invasion of the Islamic State (ISIL) have upended current cultural property policies. I study the varying and overlapping constraints on heritage management practice in Iraq since the 2011 withdrawal of United States-led Coalition forces in three separate articles. The first article discusses the emergence of the Kurdistan Regional Government General Directorate of Antiquities (KRG-GDA) in Erbil as a parallel institution to the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) in Baghdad, and how its legally ambiguous status introduced change to Iraqi cultural resource management policy and practice. I compare and contrast the organizational structure and antiquities laws KRG-GDA and SBAH and I deduce how the existence of two occasionally conflicting bureaucratic entities may negatively affect political relations between Erbil and Baghdad. In the second article I study how regional economic fluctuations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have a direct impact on the local protection of archaeological resources in the area of Soran. I review the emergency excavations conducted by Rowanduz Archaeological Program (RAP) and how real estate development, infrastructure expansion, agriculture, and unemployment pose tangible threats to archaeology. In light of these pressures, I recommend policy solutions to be incorporated into future economic and political reforms proposed by the KRG. The final article discusses the rise of the ISIL and its iconoclastic campaign against places of worship, archaeological sites, educational repositories, and their contents in Syria and northern Iraq. I analyze noteworthy episodes of intentional destruction perpetrated by ISIL and I discuss how the organization both tactically and economically profits from these attacks. I also discuss how diplomatic reactions to these attacks on culture may inadvertently support fundamentalist ideology, and I propose more effective governmental responses to erode support for ISIL that also reduce the profitability of destruction, vandalism, and looting. / 2018-12-01T00:00:00Z

Book Summary: This work is the fourth Small Wars Journal anthology focusing on radical Sunni Islamic terrorists and insurgent groups. It covers this professional journals writings for 2016 and is a compliment to the earlier Global Radical Islamist Insurgency anthologies that were produced as Vol. I: 2007-2011 (published in 2015) and Vol. II: 2012-2014 (published in 2016) and Jihadi Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Islamic State spanning 2015 (published in 2017). This anthology, which offers well over 900 pages of focused analysis, follows the same general conceptual breakdown as the earlier works and is divided into two major thematic sectionsone focusing on Al Qaeda and Islamic state activities in 2016 and the other focusing on US-Allied policies and counterinsurgent strategies.

The so called ‘Islamic State,’ an Islamic extremist organization which currently controls large swaths of territory in the Middle East, has attracted foreign fighters to its insurgency in tens of thousands. Until just recently, foreign fighters were not well researched or understood separately from local fighters. David Malet (2013) argues that insurgencies recruit foreign fighters by persuading them to defend a ‘common group’ against a threatening enemy. This ‘defensive mobilization,’ he believed, was critical to recruiting foreign fighters throughout history. After preliminary analysis, the Islamic State presented evidence contrary to this theory, and it seemed dubious that they would use defensive mobilization to recruit foreign fighters. By analyzing at Islamic State’s recruitment propaganda, this research found that the Islamic State did indeed break with Malet’s understanding of foreign fighters. Interestingly, the Islamic State instead invoked the religious duty to conquer on behalf of a legitimate religious state and restore Islamic dominion over the world. These findings may serve to increase our understanding of the Islamic State in general and will likely cause us to make adjustments in how we understand foreign fighter recruitment to other civil conflicts.

In the years following the 11 September 2001 attacks, research in the area of terrorism expanded exponentially. However, the changing nature of terrorism and lack of available data make it a difficult topic for criminologists to study; as academics we do not have access to the governmental data and data that is publicly available is often restricted due to the sensitive nature of national security issues. As first hand data is not available, an alternate data source, court records, may provide insight to the profile of current terrorists/terrorist supporters in the United States. Using court data from 71 cases of individuals in the United States charged with providing support to ISIS, and comparing this profile to the established profiles of other non-traditional criminal groups, this exploratory study attempts to be a first effort in examining the contributions criminology can make to the study of terrorism; from both theoretical and law enforcement perspectives.