Ep.65 On Jihad, Empire and Solidarity - a Conversation with Dr Darryl Li and Dr Ovamir Anjum
This past week marks twenty years since the opening of the infamous detention centre, Guantanamo Bay. It remains a symbol of the hollowness of the very values that underpin the liberal world order. Camp X-Ray was to house dangerous ‘jihadists’, a nebulous general term that is used to describe those foreign fighters that would for no explicable reason travel to distant parts of the world to fight other peoples wars. Within time, the term came to explain a universal ideology, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, Palestine to Kashmir – those that crossed national boundaries to fight for an oppressed Ummah were lumped into a singular narrative, stripped of acceptable political motives and removed of their humanity.
Of course, sensible Muslim opinion may strongly disagree with some or many of those that participated and participate in this transnational jihad mobilisation – the methods of ISIS for example remain reprehensible. However the lack of intellectual rigour with which Western policy makers and think-tanks discuss this phenomenon surprises us all.
This is the argument of our guest today. Dr Darryl Li is a practicing lawyer and anthropologist who has written a brilliant work on global Jihad mobilisation in Bosnia. His book, titled ‘The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity’, challenges the prevailing narrative – and attempts to ask more searching and important questions. Joining us is Professor Ovamir Anjum, who reflects on Dr Li’s work and the broader themes that come from it. Dr Anjum has begun one of the most exciting projects around today, bringing together academics and scholars to explore what he calls Ummatic Discourse and the Caliphate. I ask him towards the end of the interview about his project.