This presentation will focus on the Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. While over 90 years old, he continues to be a voice for nonviolence and peace in his homeland India and beyond. Dedicated to this purpose, Khan founded the Delhi-based Centre for Peace and Spirituality in 2001. An important public religious leader in India, Khan’s rejection of violence in the name of Islam and clear stand against the extremely violent state-building project of ISIS is aimed at influencing public opinion in a country which may host the largest Muslim population during the 21st century. In this presentation I will introduce the life and works of Khan, focussing mainly on how Khan argues normatively for peace and nonviolence from the Quran and the Sunna. The importance of studying Khan is twofold, first his systematic nonviolent interpretation of Islam leaves an important intellectual legacy and represents a challenge to not only radical Islamist thought, but also Islamic orthodoxy in general. Secondly, as a major non-violent religious leader he represents a unique voice channelling the antipathy towards ISIS throughout the Sub-Continent. Based in my research on the many writings of Khan as well as over 10 hours of personal interviews, I argue that Khan’s refutation of ISIS represents a special case of Khan’s general refutation of violence and Muslim state-centrism. These arguments can be briefly introduced as, for Khan, the most paradigmatic goal of Islam is that everyone will be told about the word of God. Warfare hinders this main goal since it slices social relations and destroys the sociability necessary for the spread of Islam. Furthermore, there can be no model “Islamic state” since, in Khan’s view, those who create political theory out of the example of the Medina state and the ensuing caliphate, confuse a perfect model of state with the perfect individuals who made up that society. It is the model of those perfect individuals which should be emulated and not any idealized version of a state. By contrast, according to Khan, proclaiming a state has no sanction whatsoever in Islam. Although Muslim intellectuals across the planet have routinely criticised ISIS for their excesses, Khan’s critique goes further than most by aiming directly at where ISIS doctrine intersects with mainstream Sunni thought. I conclude by arguing that Khan’s stature despite his un-orthodox views suggest that more radical critiques of ISIS might be warmly received if offered.

This presentation investigates the way “Islamist” voters in Turkey discuss ISIS/DAESH, and particularly the “conspiracy theories” they typically use to account for the group's behavior and origins – especially accounts in which the group operates at the behest of a non-Muslim power. My research centers around ethnographic interviews with voters who, in 2015, had supported the ruling AK Party in more than one national election. My argument, following Leon Festinger's classic theory of cognitive dissonance, is that such conspiracy theories owe their existence less to unconventional sets of informational assumptions than to motivated cognition. Outlining how my interviews demonstrated that anxiety concerning an embattled Muslim identity already figured prominently within my subjects' emotive schemata, and particularly how the horrific violence of a group ostensibly motivated by the religion that forms the core of their own identity visibly distressed them, I proceed to explain Festinger's theory. Festinger explained that people who learn something (a “cognition”) that contradicts another cognition (especially one supporting their self-esteem) experience an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance which they will be motivated to reduce or eliminate – usually by changing one of the dissonant cognitive elements. In this case, the detailed interviews show why abandoning the cognition that “ISIS' actions are reprehensible” or jettisoning their own identification with Islam are both non-starters for my subjects. Hence, the easiest element to alter is that “ISIS is motivated by Islam.” I argue that positing a neo-imperialist, non-Muslim power (the US, Russia, or Israel) as responsible not only reduces dissonance by absolving Islam from precipitating evil, but also aligns with existing antipathies. In short, the cognition that “bad” causes (imperialism) lead to “bad” results (ISIS) is less dissonant (and hence less desirable) than the cognition that “good” causes (Islam) lead to “bad” results (ISIS). Moreover, I argue that vacillation between reproaching ISIS for misconstruing Islam and insisting that ISIS is entirely operated by non-Muslims suggests incomplete confidence in narratives that subjects would like to believe. All told, I argue, the conspiracy theories about ISIS attract “Islamists” less on their factual merits than because of motivated cognition based on cognitive dissonance. I conclude by exploring the paradox of how the international community can recruit local allies against ISIS when antipathy towards it among locals is so intense they can only understand it to be the work of those same international players.

This presentation investigates how, and to what level of success, Iranian leaders have employed conspiracy theories about the Islamic State (ISIS) to further the Islamic Republic’s geopolitical objectives. Conspiracy theories are nothing new in Iran; having experienced British and Russian interference in the country’s internal affairs in the early 20th century, followed by the CIA’s role in overthrowing Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, many Iranians continue to view foreign manipulation as the primary force controlling their daily lives. Indeed, as Middle East scholar Graham Fuller has noted, those who fail to consider the complex foreign plots playing out behind the scenes tend to be thought of as naïve by their fellow compatriots. The rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) has fed yet another round of Iranian conspiracy theories—ones that have been deemed politically useful by Iran’s leaders. Numerous officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claim that the ISIS takeover of portions of Iraq and Syria is part of a broader American and Zionist plot to stir up discord among Muslims, with the ultimate objective being perpetual instability that can justify a continued U.S. regional presence. The fact that ISIS’s ideology is very similar to the Wahhabi strand of Islam found inside U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is offered as further proof of Washington’s complicity. These ideas have been incorporated into Islamic Republic propaganda that seeks to portray Tehran’s military activities in support of its Iraqi and Syrian allies as part of an effort to protect all Muslims against Western imperialists. They also serve to deflect attention away from any role that Iran-backed actors such as former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki may have played in fomenting the Sunni grievances that allowed ISIS to attract supporters. In order to assess the spread and significance of these beliefs, I surveyed a variety of Persian language websites and social media platforms to include the pro-Khamenei web forums Bidari Andishe and Rasekhoon, and reformist websites such as Rahesabz and Kaleme. I argue that the widespread nature of these conspiracy theories, even among those who are critical of Iran’s conservative establishment, reflects the significant well of anti-imperialist sentiment at the government’s disposal that can be used to justify the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy to its citizens.

This paper examines the role of psychological inflexibility as a moderator that influences how Americans react to violent ISIS events. Numerous media outlets, both in traditional media as well as online, report on the releases of ISIS propaganda videos as well as violent attacks claimed by ISIS. It is the aim of my study to clarify how exposure to news of these kinds of violent events effects Americans on an individual level and the psychological conditions that influence these reactions. My research study examines the psychological effect of randomly viewing one of three CNN news stories: an emotional event unrelated to ISIS, a teacher winning an award, or a propaganda video depicting the beheadings of Christians. I recruited two samples of participants: an online sample of survey-takers and a student sample at a rural public university in the American South. Special attention is given to the personality variables that influence how participants react to this video, the way that a depiction of the event changes mood, and the way that the video influences Americans’ opinions of various organizations, politicians, political parties, and minority religious groups, including Muslims and Syrian refugees who are resettling in the United States. Central to my work is psychological inflexibility, which is a psychological construct that describes the way that some people react behaviorally to their own distressing emotions and thoughts. Though it originated in clinical theories, psychological inflexibility has been shown to contribute to prejudice and discriminatory behavior. My hypothesis is that viewing the news of the violent event will increase negative mood, and those high in psychological inflexibility will seek to reduce that negative mood by supporting prejudicial security policies that unfairly target Muslims and seeking to limit the number of Syrian refugees that are granted passage to the United States. I also predict significant differences between the online sample, which is more representative of a diverse American population, and the student sample which is more rural, Southern, religious, and conservative. This research demonstrates one way that clinical psychology, a field seemingly unrelated to politics, communication studies, or the mass media, may contribute to a fruitful discussion of American reactions to ISIS.