The intersecting histories of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State

The history of the new non-state armed groups Al Qaeda and the Islamic State is that of the self-capacitation of a contemporary political violence that loosens the spatial dimension of international relations and enshrines the growing transnationalization of these entities. In this context, the advent of the EI is part of a wider trajectory of militarized violence begun earlier by Al Qaeda. The micro-narratives of these two groups, focused on their leaders and their theatrical religiosity, have obscured the broader readings to be drawn from the history of political violence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The EI, like Al Qaeda, suffers from an analytical deficit and a lack of conceptualization. The social sciences generally, and international relations more specifically, have so far been unable to pinpoint the nature of the major systemic transformations - the militarization of Islamism, the indigenization of transnationalism and the post-modern violence entrepreneurship - introduced by these two groups. Confined to security approaches, culturally informed and media-driven, analyses of these new forms of violence reveal a conceptual gap. Terrorism today is first and foremost a revelation of a " historical moment " of these mutations of contestation, whose rise is taking place against the backdrop of rapid, globalized modernization.

Mohamed-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is invited by the Professors' Assembly, at the suggestion of Professor Henry Laurens, holder of the Contemporary History of the Arab World Chair.