Al-Qaeda and the Sacrificial Subject: Martyrdom Operations for War and Politics

In this dissertation, I ask what happens to our understanding of transnational jihadism, and specifically the work of al-Qaeda if we enter into dialogue with jihadists on what they advance and elide in their use of martyrdom operations qua politics through the use of comparative theorizing. The purpose of the comparative work is to bracket criticism by listening to transnational jihadists' voices on their own terms as a way to increase knowledge of those ideas and thus develop persuasive analytical questions for al-Qaeda. I engage in a form of `dialogue' (in terms of argument, counter-argument, riposte) with al-Qaeda through several forms of comparative theorizing and use many of the premises of dialogical hermeneutics supplemented with several concepts from traditional Islamic scholarship. The interpretative framework of exploring and invoking dialogue, breath, intermezzo, and pause provides ideas for thinking through ideational impasses and beyond interpretative fiat; it is not designed as a method that is necessarily applied in the comparative work. Although al-Qaeda is centrally a political and military organization, frequent and enduring references to Islam, Islamic history, Islamist writers, and the Qur'an and Sunnah are used by the movement to communicate, educate, propagandize, and proselytize towards religious and military ends. In this work, I explore the religious foundations (and by extension the foundationalist political goals) of al-Qaeda's jihadism and Islamism. I argue, through an investigation of sacrifice, war, and politics that al-Qaeda's jihadism is based on a sacrificial subjectivity that inhabits some Islamic norms and inhibits others. Opposite of what thanatopolitics (death/sacrifice for politics) conveys, Al-Qaeda's political vision and its use of martyrdom operations qua politics are ultimately productive of what I call an acephalic, or headless politics which means that it is a politics without concrete leadership, based on unprincipled action, motivated by heedless certainty, has violence as the condition of its possibility and foundation, and appears incapable of providing the grounds for stable political institutions.