Despite great interest in the importance of “narrative” to the global jihadi movement, research on actual examples of jihadi storytelling has been very limited to date. In this paper, I discuss the phenomenon of jihadi storytelling, specifically in digital contexts, focusing on the case study of one storyteller in particular: “Najm al-Din Azad”, a Saudi jihadist who tweeted and blogged a collection of “Tales of the Heroism of the Mujahidin” while participating in the Syrian civil war.

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The role of the Internet in promoting transnational recruitment for armed groups, particularly “terrorist” organisations, is often taken for granted. In reality, the evidence is far from clear-cut. Research on how contemporary armed groups use the Internet suggests that they themselves view the Internet with considerable suspicion. Such accounts, however, fail to take account of an arguably more important question: whether those groups which make extensive use of the Internet have actually been more effective in causing violence than groups which have either chosen not to use it, or which were operating before it came into existence.

Terrorism is often held to be "violence as communication". However, terrorism studies has had very little to say about how violence as such is specifically represented by insurgent "extremist" or transgressive political actors. Informed by social movement theories of framing and the literature on virtualization, this paper sets out to offer a preliminary typology of representations of violence by such groups, and the ways in which subcultural engagement with mediated representations of violence may represent a missing dimension in our understanding of "violent extremism" or "violent radicalization".

This article seeks to turn the debate about the definition of terrorism on its head by arguing: (1) that the definitional debate has served to obscure the substantial scholarly consensus that actually exists on what terrorism is; (2) that this consensus is, however, largely unnecessary and irrelevant to the effective use of the term in the heterogeneous contexts within which it is employed; and (3) that by focusing on the quest for a definition of terrorism, terrorism scholars have largely missed the really interesting question about the word, namely, why it is that, given the heterogeneous purposes and contexts for which the word is used, we nonetheless continue to use a single word for all. In other words, how is it that we continue to know terrorism when we see it?

Jihadist violence is typically associated with being particularly indiscriminate. Often, as in variations of the new terrorism' thesis, this characteristic is proposed to correspond in some way to its other attributes such as its globalised, decentralised and postmodern' religious nature. Recent work appears to give more substance to such claims, by claiming to show a relationship between indiscriminate violence and decentralised group organisation. However, in this paper we show, based on an analysis of jihadist targeting in Western Europe and America from 2001 to 2013, that targeting choices by jihadists unconnected to organised militant groups have in fact been consistently more, rather than less discriminate in their targeting choices than their better-integrated peers. Drawing on this finding, as well as a broader reading of jihadist targeting discourses, we argue for a more complex understanding of the relationship between radicalisation, extremist ideology, decentralisation, and targeting choice.

Despite increasing concern over the potential threat from forest jihad, there has been no systematic attempt to assess whether such attacks are in fact taking place. Drawing on principles from the geospatial profiling of terrorist events, fire-risk prediction data, and information on jihadist convictions, this article offers a thorough review of the evidence to address this question. The available information suggests that so far, jihadists have not attempted to attack North American or European wildlands by means of arson. Despite calls for popular resistance terrorism in the jihadist literature, and the apparently low costs associated with this type of attack, jihadists have so far shown little appetite for forest jihad.

In this article we offer a first attempt at providing a set of universal grading criteria for determining on what basis, and how far, an item of discursive content can be considered “terroristic.” In doing so, we draw loosely on the existing COPINE scale for child abuse images. The scale described in the article is not intended to reflect actual risk of engagement in terrorist violence, nor is it intended to have evidential validity in relation to offenses in certain jurisdictions relating to “terrorist publications.” Rather, by formalising assumptions which seem already to be latent in the literature on terrorist use of the Internet, it aspires to serve as a starting point for a more methodologically coherent approach to relationships between content—particularly online content—and terrorism.

Dedication Bruce Hoffman Foreword Louise Richardson 1. Introduction Alison Watson 2. Regime Terror as a Political Weapon in Modern History Tim Wilson 3. Concept and Typology of Regime Terror Brian M. Jenkins 4. Trends in the use of Terror by States since the end of the Cold War Neil G. Bowie 5. Obstacles to International Action against State Terror in the post-Cold War international system Peter Lehr & Javier Argomaniz 6. The Case of Saddam Hussein's Terror against the Kurds and the International Response Michael Boyle 7. Indonesian Terror against East Timor separatists and the International Response Brenda and James Lutz 8. Terror in Rwanda in 1994 and the Failure of International Response Richard Chasdi 9. Towards a More Effective International Response to State Terror, based on Democratic Principles and the Protection of Human Rights Conor Gearty 10. Thinking about State Terror: In Conclusion Orla Lynch & Gilbert Ramsay

Work on contemporary instances of "violent extremist" texts tends to see these primarily as more or less instrumental extensions of political (or political-religious) movements. As a result, there are few studies that devote close attention to individual examples of the texts themselves. In this article, we offer a detailed analysis of two jihadist speeches by the prominent ideologues Adam Gadahn and the late Anwar al-Awlaki. We argue that Al-Awlaki's work ultimately succeeds where Gadahn's seemingly fails because it is underpinned by a form of fundamentalism which, paradoxically, is inherently premised on the survival of possibilities for dialogue and polyglossia.

In this paper I examine the apparent failure of Al Qaeda ideologues, not for want of trying, to incite a widespread campaign of ‘individual jihad’. Not only are instances of genuinely ‘leaderless’ jihadist violence rare, they also tend to be more discriminate and less lethal in their targeting than the operations which Al Qaeda expresses a discursive preference for, and which it attempts to carry out. I argue that an explanation for the rather constrained nature of grassroots jihadist violence can be found, rather paradoxically, in the logic of collective action, which seems to underlie the rhetorical attempts of jihadist ideologues to incite violence. I then briefly examine the possible implications of this for understanding what makes for a successful ‘leaderless’ terrorist campaign.

Over the last few years, it has often been suggested that use of the Internet for a variety of terrorist purposes constitutes a serious threat, and requires action of some kind at the international level. This chapter begins by examining the threat. It argues that the looseness of "terrorism" as a phenomenon particularly as represented on the Internet - means that the problem may have been exaggerated. The issue, after all, is not in and of itself that terrorist organizations or individual "terrorists" are using the Internet, but rather, whether there is more terrorist violence happening as a result. This question is far from resolved, but there does not seem to be compelling evidence that there is. The chapter then considers the proposition that an "international problem" like terrorist use of the Internet requires an "international solution." It provides the observation that this formula assumes a symmetry between actions available to terrorist actors and states which may, in itself, make for unimaginative counter-terrorism policy. It then considers whether there is a residue of issues arising from terrorist use of the Internet which can genuinely not be countered at a local level, and which are not already relevant to existing international counter-terrorism provisions. Given the serious changes action here would imply for Internet governance, and the uncertainty of the gains that would be delivered in terms of security, there is probably not good reason yet for drastic international action against specifically terrorist misuse of the Internet.

While the idea of countering ‘violent extremist’ narratives is a matter of considerable policy interest, particularly in relation to beliefs associated with the wider Al-Qaeda movement, little has been written on the specific dynamics of arguments between supporters and critics of Al-Qaeda on the Internet. In this exploratory article, I attempt, based broadly on the pragma-dialectic perspective of argumentation theory, a detailed analysis of one set of arguments between supporters and critics of Al-Qaeda in a debate which took place on an Arabic language Web Forum in late 2009 and early 2010.