La multiplication des manifestations décriant le racisme et les violences policières aux États-Unis nous incitent à réfléchir aux traitements différentiels de personnes perçues comme posant problème : ici au motif de la couleur de leur peau, ailleurs en raison de leur niveau socio-économique, de leur habitat ou encore de leur origine. Cela dit, il semble toujours…
Author: Ahmed Ajil
Wie gefährlich sind «Terrorist*innen»? Zur Tragweite eines Labels
Die geplanten Gesetzesänderungen zur Bekämpfung von Terrorismus stellen Auswüchse repressiver und feindstrafrechtlicher kriminalpolitischer Tendenzen dar, die von einer These profitieren, die selten in Frage gestellt wird. Nämlich, dass Terrorist*innen gefährlich sind. Doch was bedeutet es, in der Schweiz ein*e «Terrorist*in» zu sein? Ist der Kurzschluss zwischen dem Label und der Gefährlichkeit gerechtfertigt? Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung….
Decolonising terrorism: The racist pre-crime, cheap orientalism and the Taqiya trap
Abstract Since 9/11, states around the world have engaged in efforts to counter the so-called terrorist threat. Besides neo-colonial military projects, this has manifested itself in a mushrooming of laws, policies, and practices in the realm of counterterrorism, and an explosion of research into terrorism, extremism, and radicalisation. In this chapter, drawing on my experiences…
The instrumentalisation of Taqiya in counterterrorism discourse and practice
While the US’s war in Afghanistan appears to be drawing to a close, elsewhere it is business as usual for the Global War on Terror. Suspicion based on racial-cultural traits – particularly those associated with “Muslimness” – is a key feature of counter-terrorism policies which have turned inwards, away from neo-colonial expeditionary projects in Afghanistan…
Leaving peace for war: An exploratory study of Swiss men’s trajectories toward engagement in Arab conflicts
While the issue of foreign fighting has been very present in Swiss public discourse in recent years, little is known about the actual trajectories of young men who engage in this particular form of political violence. Based primarily on face-to-face in-depth interviews with four Swiss male nationals who travelled to conflict zones in the Arab…
Politico-ideological violence in Lebanon: The narrative embeddedness of grievances
1 Introduction Grievance-based violence comes in many forms. The phenomenon labelled variably as terrorism, political violence, or violent extremism is one of them. Scholarship in this field has for years pointed to the importance of grievances in the process towards violent action, yet in-depth engagement with grievances is only starting to pick up. This special issue…
‘Yes, security, there is security. But other than that, nothing.’: An empirical inquiry into the ‘everyday (in)security’ of Syrian and Iraqi urban refugees in Jordan
Ahmed Ajil[1], Manon Jendly[2], Claudia Campistol Mas[3] Scholarship on security has recently seen a shift from traditionally state-centric, elitist and objectivist conceptions of ‘security’ towards human-centred perspectives which put emphasis on forms of ‘vernacular’ and ‘everyday’ security, and promote bottom-up empirical inquiries to further our understand of what security looks like ‘from below’. There remains, however,…
Interviewing activists and terrorists: a detailed research protocol
In the domain of PVE as well as reintegration, the most interesting studies are arguably based on material collected first-hand from the individuals involved in the phenomenon of political violence or terrorism. As more individuals from the 2013-2016 wave of foreign terrorist fighters are exiting the criminal justice system, young individuals with no memory of…
Studying Terror Through my I’s: Autoethnographic Insider/Outsider Reflections of an Arab-Muslim Researcher
Abstract The phenomena referred to as terrorism and political violence have become a major object of academic interest over the past two decades. While the lack of first-hand data collection has been criticised, a growing number of researchers are conducting field research and interviews with individuals involved in these phenomena. Among those, there are scholars with ethnic,…
Ma thèse en 180 secondes: Université de Lausanne
Un mardi… en 2001…les tours jumelles s’effondrent. Tout le monde s’en souvient. Après ce tragique 11 septembre, on nous a fait croire – même dans le monde académique – que tenter de comprendre reviendrait à justifier, à excuser. Mais comment trouver des solutions à un problème sans une analyse approfondie de ses causes? J’ai voulu comprendre. Et…