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The Islamic State's Discourse of Identity and Subjectivity
Abstract
This paper investigates the form of collective identity and subjectivity that the Islamic State (IS) group strives to construct for its members and the broader Muslim community. The notions of identity and subjectivity are closely interrelated in discourse analytical studies. In accordance with the predominantly post-structuralist-oriented discourse theory, I understand identity as identifying with a subject position, or a form of subjectivity within a discourse. As Hall (1996) put it, identity is a point of suture between different discourses, practices and processes which interpolate individuals as subjects and produce subjectivity. Subjectivity, in this sense, denotes agency and actorhood as well. Carrying out a multiperspectival discourse analysis of nearly 70 articles in IS’s former English-language magazines, Dabiq and Rumiyah, 35 articles in its weekly Arabic-language newsletter, an-Naba’, and 18 audiovisual messages, covering a period from 2013 to 2019, I argue that the Islamic State’s discourse attempts to construct a distinctly ideal Muslim subject, or what, following the work of Wodak et al. (1999), I call a homo Islamicus. This subject is articulated in relation to a singular, totalizing, salvific, and transcendent—in the sense of drawing its legitimacy from a sacred realm transcending temporal, material existence and experience – mode of collective identity. Formulated as an articulatory disruption in the modern Muslim context and beyond, I identify tawhid, or the notion of unicity of God, as the nodal point or central sign in IS’s multi-layered structure of identity/subjectivity, around which other important signs, or what I call sub-categories of praxis, are (re)configured. The related signs include: al-wala wal-bara, or the notion of loyalty to Islam, Muslims and God while disavowing disbelievers and their ideas; jihad, in the sense of armed campaign; jama’a, the sole righteous congregation of Muslims; belief in the urgency of the IS caliphate here and now; and bay’a or allegiance to the IS leader/caliph. IS articulates its “divinely-sanctioned” form of identity and subjectivity in opposition to extant Muslim subjectivities interpellated by other Islamist and non-Islamist discourses. This entails a discursive struggle with rival discourses over the very ontological meaning of Islam and Muslimness. Because IS’s discourse, as the manifestation of its ideology, promotes its interpretation of divine truth as the sole universal truth, it consequently believes that there is only one true Muslim identity and true Islam, which IS has the exclusive privilege of comprehending in its purest, trans-temporal and trans-spatial form.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
Islamic Studies