3.0

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No topic has captured the public imagination of late quite so dramatically as the specter of global jihadism. While much has been said about the way jihadists behave, their ideology remains poorly understood. This course aims to help students explore the intellectual development of jihadist ideology, focusing on how conflict has shaped Islamic theology and law. We go from the movement’s origins in the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the jihadist insurgencies of the 1990s and the 9/11 wars. What emerges is the story of a pragmatic but resilient warrior doctrine that often struggles, as so many utopian ideologies do, to consolidate the idealism of theory with the reality of practice.