Global Jihad: A Brief History
A Crown Seminar with Glenn Robinson
Monday, September 20, 2021
Missed the seminar? The recording is available with closed captioning.
Most violent jihadi movements in the twentieth century focused on removing corrupt, repressive, secular regimes in the Muslim world. But, following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a new form of jihadism emerged: global jihad, turning to the international arena as the primary locus of ideology and action. In this talk, Glenn Robinson develops a compelling and provocative argument about this violent political movement's evolution. His new book, Global Jihad, tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qa'ida's call to drive the United States out of the Muslim world; ISIS using "jihadi cool" to recruit followers; and leaderless efforts of stochastic terror to "keep the dream alive." Robinson connects the rise of global jihad to other "movements of rage," such as the Nazi Brownshirts, White supremacists, the Khmer Rouge, and Boko Haram. Ultimately, he shows that while global jihad has posed a low strategic threat, it has instigated an outsized reaction from the United States and other Western nations.
Glenn Robinson is on the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and is affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as an expert advisor to USAID and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Co-sponsored by the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies program, Department of History, Department of Politics, and the International and Global Studies program at Brandeis.