Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The inability of states to counter U.S. technological and strategic power on the conventional battlefield requires that states employ an insurgent-style of warfare against U.S. forces. More then any state, Iran has utilized the strategic employment of asymmetry to achieve multiple objectives. Through a combination of militias, insurgencies, terror groups, and organized crime organizations, Iran has built an effective counter to the United States' conventional supremacy. Consequently, Iran's use of non-state armed groups has enormous implications on the future of international security.

This paper examines Iran’s use of non-state armed groups to achieve its political and security objectives. It recognizes the use of non-state armed groups as being a critical component to an Iranian security doctrine that is guided by strategic asymmetry. Specifically, it examines: the political and strategic cultures that contribute to the use of non-state armed groups; the structural components that facilitate their use; the operational particulars of the groups which Iran utilizes; the broader implications of their strategic employment.

To achieve this qualitative study, this paper uses an architecture for the study of non-state armed groups. This architecture was developed by Professors Richard Shultz, Douglas Farrah, and Itamara Lochard in the US Air Force INSS Occasional Paper (57), entitled “Armed Groups: A Tier-One Security Policy.” This framework provides four categories of non-state armed groups, and it utilizes six variables for the analysis of individual groups.

Analysis leads this study to conclude the following: Iran’s senior leadership sees the exportation of jihadi insurgencies as paramount to achieving its long-term ideological goals.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: While Barber has portrayed Jihad and McWorld as related, yet competing, processes, there are ways in which rampant global capitalism goes hand in hand with the creation of post-modern identity communities. Modern imagined communities are tied by common understandings of history, to a homeland, and through state institutions or non-state religious, political, and cultural organizations controlled by the group. Instead of any kind of hegemonic agreements of what constitutes communal identity, post-modern communities are characterized by the ability of individuals to opt into and out of groups, fashioning their self-identities from bits and pieces of cultural and communal life. Increasingly even the elements selected are not controlled by the identity community, but instead are driven by global capitalism. To explore how globalization contributes to reformulations of individuals? relationships to identity communities, this paper will examine the growing use of Islamic banking in Muslim communities in the United States and Europe. The demands for Islamic banking are increasingly met by Citigroup, HSBC, and other large multi-national banks, which are developing specific accounts, loans, and investment opportunities for Muslim customers. The paper will compare these banks with immigrant and Christian banks, trying to determine both who is using these banks and how it fits into their own self-identity as well as mapping out how globalization is impacting the banks? missions. It will also put Islamic banking into context with other expressions of post-modern identity communities, such as media targeted towards Muslims, much of which is also owned by multi-national corporations, and the role of Islamic-oriented web-sites and cyber-communities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Recent commentary on political developments in the Muslim
world has focused on “jihadism” and “political Islam”. As was the case
with significant portions of the Fundamentalisms Project, a common
assumption has been that ideology and ideological factors are critical
shapers of the strategy and tactics of “jihadists” and “political
Islamists”. Possibly as a consequence of Orientalist presumptions,
scholarship typically treats the pragmatic, preference-ordered
decision-making by such groups as wholly subservient to ideology. The
result is a conceptual blind spot that has discouraged or sometimes
prevented potentially fruitful routes of comparative analysis. The
paper describes this problem and seeks to bridge the gap by comparing
jihadist groups to embryonic state organizations and political
Islamists to self-promoting actors in a politics of mass participation.
Examples and observations are drawn from the Middle East and South
Asia.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper focuses on comparing the justifications for
the “Just War” tradition with the Islamic legal concept of “Jihad.”
There are two primary objectives to this paper. The first is to discuss
which goals and forms of political violence are considered legitimate
within these traditions, and to critically review their grounds of
justifications. Specifically this paper will examine the “Just War”
tradition, as articulated by Thomas Aquinas and later elaborated by
Carl Schmidt in “Nomos of the Earth,” and how the claim of “Just War”
was used in Medieval Europe to validate certain violent conflicts while
at same time invalidating other violent conflicts as unjust wars. It
will also examine the evolution of the legal concept of “Jihad” and how
certain acts of violence in public space would be rendered authentic
“Jihads,” by Islamic legal jurists, while other episodes of violence
would be rendered as acts of “Qat ‘al-tariq” (Acts of Rebellion) or
“Hirabah” (Domestic Terrorism) within the Islamic Empire. The second
objective is to relate this discussion to an analysis of recent
justifications for political violence in the Arab World. Specifically,
how various conflicts within the Middle East during the twentieth and
twenty-first century have or have not been viewed as authentic or
inauthentic “Jihads,” by various contemporary Islamic jurists, such as
the Muftis of Al-Azhar (The oldest Islamic University in the World),
and Muslim political ideologues such as Syed Qutb (The main ideologue
of Egypt’s “Muslim Brotherhood”).