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Volume II, Issue 2

Perspectives on Terrorism -

Terrorism’s Fifth Wave: Part II

Afterword and Postscript all Rolled Into One: Ethics and Janjaweed Research

In the last analysis, fifth wave theory is just that; a theory. It focuses on societies at the verge of collapse, which produce terrorist movements with millennial dreams of remaking their people anew in a single generation. To accomplish this, the only logical avenue of action leads to sexual violence—rape on the grand scale—which is directed primarily at ethnic or tribal kin.

From the vantage point of the outsider, the violence appears dispiritingly familiar. Like post-Cold War conflicts from Yugoslavia to Rwanda, it appears a savage throwback to an earlier time and the prevalence of rape in these conflicts is explained as simply “a product of the times” or a “byproduct of war which can no longer be tolerated”. However, to know whether a terrorist group involved in such violence is a product of the fifth wave of modern terrorism as it has been defined in this paper can not be ascertained with certainty from afar unless that campaign has been relatively long-lived and has left a considerable oral or written “paper trail” of insider accounts documenting the goals, visions and dreams of its leaders and those of its rank and file members. The Khmer Rouge recorded everything in painstaking (if often deadening) detail. The Lord’s Resistance Army’s defectors and escapees have provided a vivid picture of Joseph Kony and the millennialist dreams of that movement. Both can be posited with a high degree of certainty to be fifth wave entities. T the case of the Janjaweed is less clear. They write nothing, for theirs is an oral culture, and the Sudanese government support has given little incentive for Janjaweed fighters to defect.

To determine whether the Janjaweed are a fifth wave terrorist group—and more, to better gauge the importance and validity of fifth wave theory itself, fieldwork is necessary. But this is more easily said than done. No independent academic researcher has, to my knowledge, attempted to conduct a research project at the height of a campaign of genocide or ethnic cleansing “embedded” (to use an Iraq War mediaism) with the perpetrators of the atrocities. As we have noted, research comes later, often much later. In African conflicts like that in Darfur which leave few written documents and where history is recorded in the minds and hearts of men, the truth becomes malleable and history self-serving. Essentially then, in ethical terms, such a project would be operating on a kind of terra incognita.

Recently, a nascent discussion has begun on the ethics of doing research in war zones. [54] There is of course considerable literature –mostly originating from military sciences - dealing with ethics in war, but these do not really speak to civilian researchers in war zones. NGOs have rules for their employees operating in conflict areas and these may provide some helpful guidance, but NGOs are organizations. The academic researcher, by the nature of his or her work, operates alone. Moreover, were I to undertake such a research project, I would employ a form of participant/observer methodology that the Sociologist of Religion Thomas Robbins has dubbed the “Interpretive Approach”.[55] The Interpretive Approach involves intensive fieldwork based on extended residence with the research subject within the subjects own community, and often, within his or her own home. It includes immersion in the literature, written or oral, and aims to be able to produce for the reader, as accurately as possible, a vision of the world—this world and the next—as seen “through the eyes of the other”. This methodology provides readers with the beliefs and motivations which drive violent and seemingly irrational actions, within the historical and sociological contexts of the belief systems and cultural milieus under study.

While my basic research approach will not change, I hold no illusions. The Janjaweed, Darfur and the Sudan present unique and potentially far more dangerous challenges than any of my previous work. However, I have spent a good deal of time in the Sudan, [56] having been there on four occasions and know the country well. I have no doubt that the research, despite its formidable challenges, would be successful. Yet there is no getting around the fact that such a course of research raises some critical ethical issues. I have experienced a few of these in much milder forms in the past, and dealt with them in previous publications. But it also raises issues of a deeper, more searing nature, the responses to which I cannot now, in all candor, completely predict. [57]

First the easy question: is it ethical to even speak with perpetrators—to publish their views and ideas as if they held equal moral weight with the testimonies of victims? The question is valid, and I would respond in this way. Victim testimony is vital and compelling on a variety of fronts, but as we have noted, victims can never explain why a perpetrator acted as he or she did. And it is precisely this information that policy makers most require.

In my past publications, I have dealt with many of the most feared pariah groups of Western society and found, sometimes to my surprise, that spark, however dim, of humanity that connects even the most feared and demonized of perpetrators to the human race. In one of my publications, I put that moment of recognition in these terms:

If this finding could be given a name, it would be this: the shock of shared humanity. And in truth, this bothered me greatly. How could such people be so much like us? And why would this seem so obvious to me, and so opaque to the wider culture and the academic world alike? Surely I felt, the problem must lie with me. It was at this point that I seriously thought of finding some other avenue of research.

It was at this nadir that a colleague and good friend, Doug Milford of Wheaton College in Illinois, made an off-hand observation that would in a significant way change the course of my work. Wheaton is a Christian college and Doug himself is a devout evangelical Christian. Thus, when he observed in the context of suggesting that perhaps aspects of my research…would be better left untouched—that the real problem was that I had been given a gift of discernment which allowed me to find, at the deepest level, the spark of goodness, of humanity, in even the most lost of souls, it caused me to reflect deeply on the implications of the idea.

In the evangelical worldview, evil is a literal, ever-present reality in the world. And discernment is understood as one of the gifts of the spirit which God grants to allow the faithful to discern between truth and deception. Thus the force of the idea. This after all is at the core of all of the great religious traditions. In Judaism, it is conceived as the Sacred Spark and in Christianity it is the human soul. In Buddhism, it is the Buddha nature. But by any name, and in any tradition, it is the power of discernment, the search for the core of humanity and the spark of the divine, that unites us all in the human family. And it is this universal truth of the oneness of all human creation which we so often forget in dealing with those with whom most violently disagree. It is this recognition of shared humanity which is so lacking in the popular constructions of the radical right, and it is precisely the lack of this recognition of shared humanity that allows for the creation of the imaginary monsters of terra incognita. There are real world implications of all this. [58]

The second set of ethical questions raised by such a project is beyond my experience, and thus not so easily answered. I have in my life been in active conflict zones. I have seen people hurt, and I have seen people killed. It is sometimes not easy to live with these memories, but the violence of the Janjaweed is on another scale of magnitude altogether. The proposed research is unique in its conception. In particular, the kind of sexual violence associated with the Janjaweed is, to virtually all of us in the Western world, unimaginable. The ethical issues arising from mere proximity, much less giving witness, to such atrocities are immense, and immensely hard to fathom. The normal ethical codes in doing participant observer research—protection of research subjects, anonymity when requested, and the like which are best articulated in the Anthropological Association literature have always governed my fieldwork ethics. Yet the Janjaweed presents unique moral and ethical dilemmas and unique legal issues.

I have thought deeply about these issues, and have begun to consult with colleagues in a number of fields about the ethical and legal issues and responsibilities that could arise from this research. Fortunately, as a member of the Executive Board and Book Review Editor for the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, I have a wide network of colleagues in a number of academic disciplines, as well as government and security officials and members of NGOs from around the world to draw upon. Each of these colleagues in turn has global networks of their own with which to consult on these issues. At this point, I have no answers, only questions.

Which points up the unique interactive value of an on-line journal like Perspectives on Terrorism where the ideas and views of a number of colleagues can be sought on the viability, as well as the ethics, of a research project of this nature. I very much invite comment either in the journal’s private Article Discussion Forum or (preferably) by private email on this article, and on the wider ideas that it raises in terms of the viability and ethical standards of such research.

Finally, why would anyone want to undertake such research? The answer is simple enough, and best elucidated by the great scholar and statesman of the Sudan, Prof. Francis Deng, who in turn borrowed it from a Western scholar who has studied the Sudan for many years, Prof. Robert O. Collins:

It really does not matter what particular government is in power—parliamentarian, military or Islamist—it is the daily encounters with the warmth, charm and friendliness of Sudanese of every ethnicity I have known which makes them unique among the people of the world. I have asked myself many times what makes them so affectionate, helpful and hospitable, and I have no answer. I do not know that I can recall any Westerner who has not established a deep affection for the Sudanese while at the same time cursing the ‘bloody country’. I have never found anyone who can produce a satisfactory answer for his love of the Sudanese that appears an irrational emotion so common among expatriates that is jokingly called the incurable disease of ‘Sudanitis’… [59]

Jeffrey Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Institute for the Study of Religion, Violence and Memory.

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NOTES:

[1] The published version is David C. Rapoport, "Modern Terror: The Four Waves," in Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy, ed. Audrey Cronin and J. Ludes (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 2004), 46-73.

[2] Roger Griffin, “Net Gains and GUD Reactions : Patterns of Prejudice in a Neo-fascist Groupuscule,” Patterns of Prejudice 33: 2 (1 April 1999), 31-50.

[3] Most famously as the dreaded Moscow based ‘Terror Central’ of Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981). For a more academic take on the Cold War theories of terrorism as centrally directed, see the anthology Uri Ra'anan and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy., Hydra of Carnage: The International Linkages of Terrorism and Other Low-Intensity Operations: The Witnesses Speak (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1986).

[4] Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Xivth and Xvth Centuries (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985).

[5] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “The Cycles of American Politics,” in Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 23-50.

[6] "The complete Chuang Tzu based on the translation by James Legge (of 1890)." http://taoistresource.home.comcast.net/~taoistresource/0697_jl.htm.

[7] The full theory is explicated at length in Jeffrey Kaplan, "The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism?" Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 4 (2007): 545-70.

[8] For good sources, see for example David P. Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), Craig Etcheson, The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, Westview Special Studies on South and Southeast Asia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Kampuchea, 1930-1975 (London: Verso, 1985), François Ponchaud, Cambodia Year Zero (London: Allen Lane, 1978).

[9] Kaplan, "The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism?" 549.

[10] The pre-state Khmer Rouge is little discussed in the literature of terrorism, perhaps because of the enormity of the genocidal project which the movement was to undertake once in power. But I agree with Brice Hoffman and many others in asserting that terrorism is by definition oppositional in nature. Regimes exercise terror, oppositional movements may utilize terrorism as a tactic of opposition, owing to the asymmetrical nature of their struggle with states. For this argument, see Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, Rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 15-16.

[11] Kaplan, "The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism?" 548.

[12] The best source on Alice Lakwena, who recently died in exile in Kenya, remains Heike Behrend, Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985-97 (Oxford: Fountain Publishers, 1999). For two good obituaries of Alice Lakwena, see “Alice Lakwena,” Economist.com, January 25, 2007, http://www.economist.com/obituary/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8584604&fsrc=nwlehfree; and “Alice Lakwena,” Timesonline, January 24, 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1295608.ece.

[13] Which included such oddities for a militia as proscribing killing, forbidding its soldiers to take cover under fire, or to go into battle with any more or any less than two testicles; see Ibid., 47.

[14] For relevant case studies, see for example Joanne Csete, Juliane Kippenberg, and Human Rights Watch (Organization), The War within the War: Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2002), 326-41Christine Chinkin, "Rape and Sexual Abuse of Women in International Law," European Journal of International Law 5, no. 3 (1994), Human Rights Watch, "Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur," (Human Rights Watch, 2005), Amnesty International., "Darfur: Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and Its Consequences," (2004).

[15] For example, Emily Wax, "'We Want to Make a Light Baby': Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing," Washington Post, June 30, 2004, 1.

[16] Kaplan, "The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism?" 560.

[17] Peter Landesman, "A Woman's Work," New York Times, September 15, 2002. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505EEDA1F3EF936A2575AC0A9649C8B63.

[18] Human Rights Watch/Africa. and Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project., The Scars of Death: Children Abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1997), 5-36Ruddy Dorn and Koen Vlassenroot, "Kony's Message: A New Koine? The Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda," African Affairs 98, no. 390 (1999), Angela Veale and Aki Stavrou, "Violence, Reconciliation and Identity: The Reintegration of Lord's Resistance Army Child Abductees in Northern Uganda," (Institute for Security Studies South Africa, 2003), 1pGeorge Omona and Karen Elise Matheson, "The Hidden Health Trauma of Child Soldiers," Lancet, 337-52Anthony Vinci, "Existential Motivations in the Lord's Resistance Army's Continuing Conflict," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 30, no. 4 (2007), 29-52Paul Jackson, "The March of the Lord's Resistance Army: Greed of Grievance in Northern Uganda?" Small Wars and Insurgencies 13, no. 3 (2002). To name but a few.

[19] Julie Flint and Alexander De Waal, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (London: Zed Books, 2005), Gérard Prunier, Darfur the Ambiguous Genocide (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2005).

[20] Typical of this literature, and in fact one of the better examples, is Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace, The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).

[21] IRIN Special Report, "Our Bodies - Their Battle Ground: Gender-based Violence in Conflict Zones." The report and film can both be downloaded from http://www.irinnews.org/IndepthMain.aspx?IndepthId=20&ReportId=62814.

[22] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/sudan/.

[23] To take just one Hollywood example from my generation, Mia Farrow at http://www.miafarrow.org/. Hotter by far, and available in a plethora of languages, see Angelina Jolie’s Darfur journals http://www.elros.altervista.org/aj/ajindex.htm. And I suppose balance demands the inclusion of George Clooney’s adventures in Sudan and Chad, which can be viewed directly on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFVlHsaq5yg. On the Rock for Darfur tour, see http://www.myspace.com/rockfordarfur.

[24] The point is made well in Human Rights Watch, Watch, "Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur." (2005).

[25] The exact quote was “arms are the adornments of men,” and Imam Musa used it in the context of getting a large audience in a village to put down their weapons long enough to listen to his words, which were “stronger than bullets.” By the end of the 1980s, to use Imam Musa’s metaphor, the men of Darfur had learned the fine art of accessorization with the AK-47, which sold for less than $40, the ultimate fashion statement. On Imam Musa, see Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa Al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986). For a wonderful description of the coming of the Kalashnikov culture to Darfur, see Prunier, Darfur the Ambiguous Genocide.

[26] I well recall having recently returned to the US from many years in the Middle East to pursue my Ph.D. when I ran across a small article in the back of the New York Times noting that a significant amount of off-shore oil had been found in Sudanese waters. My thought that day, considerably redacted for publication, was, “Poor Sudanese (not the word used at the time, but in historical hindsight it will more than serve—a point about the flexibility of memory that has considerable relevance to this article), now on top of all their other problems they are going to have to have human rights.” Indeed, within a month over thirty individual pieces of legislation were introduced in the US Congress criticizing the Sudanese government for its practices on human rights and religious liberties. Amazing how the denizens of oil states elicit a degree of sympathy that poor, war torn countries without oil—the Sudan for example—fail to elicit from states, and quite often, from the NGO community as well. On the legislative outpouring of crocodile tears for the plight of the Sudanese, see Walid Phares, "The Sudanese Battle for American Opinion," Middle East Quarterly V, no. 1 (1998): http://www.meforum.org/article/383.

[27] http://humanrights4all-africa.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-maps-darfur-crisis.html.

[28] "President Bush Discusses Genocide in Darfur, Implements Sanctions," Statement in White House Diplomatic Reception Room, May 29, 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070529.html. The situation in Darfur more closely resembles ethnic cleansing then genocide, with the Janjaweed acting as the tip of the spear aimed at the Fur and other sedentary tribes (the so-called “African tribes” in the press) and rape as the primary tool through which these target groups are being forced from their land. Once out of the way, the Janjaweed have evinced little interest in following them or finding ways to exterminate them, which is ultimately what drives a genocidal campaign. On this topic, see for example Marnie McCuen, The Genocide Reader: The Politics of Ethnicity and Extermination (Hudson, Wis.: GEM Publications, 2000), Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny, Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004).

[29] Alexander De Waal, Famine That Kills: Darfur, Sudan, Rev. ed., Oxford Studies in African Affairs (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Cf. University for Peace, "Environmental Degradation as a Cause of Conflict in Darfur" (papers presented at the Environmental Degradation as a Cause of Conflict in Darfur, Conference in Khartoum, Sudan, December 2004), 101.

[30] The book that best documents the Libyan designs on Chad and its role of Darfur in those designs in the 1980s is Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2006). Unfortunately, the heart of the book is simply a reprint of Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Africa's Thirty Years War: Libya, Chad, and the Sudan, 1963-1993 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999). The last two chapters cover the current crisis, but most of this material is taken from Flint and De Waal’s text.

[31] On the CPA, see International Crisis Group, "The Khartoum-Splm Agreement: Sudan's Uncertain Peace," in Africa Report N°96 (2005).

[32] The full text of the volume in translation can be found at http://www.sudanjem.com/sudan-alt/english/books/blackbook_part1/blackbook_part1_20040422_bbone.pdf. The second volume can be found on the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) website at http://www.sudanjem.com/en/index.php.

[33] Discussion with Ambassador Ukek in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1 October 2007.

[34] Margie Buchanan-Smith and Susanne Jaspars, "Conflict, Camps and Coercion: The Continuing Livlihoods Crisis in Darfur Final Report," (World Food Program (WFP) Sudan, 2006). Cf. Flint and De Waal, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, 49-57.

[35] Prunier, Darfur the Ambiguous Genocide, 97-98.

[36] Ibid., 98.

[37] Both the Prunier and the Flint and De Waal monographs agree on this point. For more detailed information, see for examples: "Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur," (Human Rights Watch, 2005). Human Rights Watch, "Darfur Documents Confirm Government Policy of Militia Support," in Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper (2004). Ted Dagne and Bathsheaba Everett, "Sudan: The Darfur Crisis and the Status of the North-South Negotiations," ed. Congressional Research Service (CRS, 2004). “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General: Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 of 18 September 2004.” Geneva, 25 January 2005. www.un.org/News/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf.

[38] IRIN, "Sudan: The Escalating Crisis in Darfur," (2003), Watch, "Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur.", International., "Darfur: Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and Its Consequences.", Wax, "'We Want to Make a Light Baby': Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing.", Alfred de, "Darfur Women Describe Gang-Rape Horror," ABC News 2007, Jen Marlowe et al., Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (New York: Nation Books, 2006), Samuel Totten and Eric Markusen, Genocide in Darfur: Investigating the Atrocities in the Sudan (New York: Routledge, 2006).

[39] Jaspars, "Conflict, Camps and Coercion: The Continuing Livlihoods Crisis in Darfur Final Report."

[40] International Crisis Group, "Darfur's New Security Reality," in Africa Report No. 134 (2007), Human Rights Watch, "Darfur 2007: Chaos by Design,” (2007). The ICG report is more recent and is much recommended for its focus on tribal politics.

[41] “Chad Reiterates Determination to Pursue Rebels in Sudan,” the Sudan Tribune, January 9, 2008. http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article25499.

[42] “Darfur Attack Kills Peacekeepers,” BBC News, 1 October 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7020596.stm. And most recently, “Sudanese Troops Fire on UN Convoy in Darfur,” Washington Post, January 9, 2008, 12.

[43] For the exquisitely complex details, see International Crisis Group, "Darfur's New Security Reality."

[44] For a detailed table of these incidents, see “Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Under Attack in Sudan,” http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/international_justice/darfur/table/ngo-table.aspx.

[45] Discussion with Ambassador Ukek in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1 October 2007.

[46] See for one famous example Daniel Jonah Goldhagen et al., The "Willing Executioners"/"Ordinary Men" Debate: Selections from the Symposium, April 8, 1996 (Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Research Institute, 1996).

[47] Which is not to say that this work has not produced some superior scholarship. See for example Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

[48] Flint and De Waal, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, 33.

[49] For a good, recent and wonderfully classroom friendly biography of the Prophet, see Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (New York: Atlas Books/HarperCollins, 2006). Muhammad’s threat was poetic justice to the core. He warned that any Muslim who killed a girl child would, upon his death, first see that child who would ask what she had done to deserve death? As in her innocence no answer could be posited, the unfortunate man would be whisked immediately to hell. It is important here to note the practicality of Islam. Female infanticide was a plague of the ancient world, East and West. Through the institution of an alms tax, Muhammad eliminated the economic necessity for such a practice and thus ended it within a generation—a remarkable achievement in the ancient world whose lesson is binding upon Muslims to this day.

[50] For attempts to heal the physical, and to some extent the psychological and spiritual wounds of such women, see especially the filmed version of the IRIN Special Report, "Our Bodies - Their Battle Ground: Gender-based Violence in Conflict Zones." Similarly, a woman interviewed in the Washington Post’s Darfur video recounts who she was taken by ten Janjaweed, nine of whom raped her. She is pictured as alone and isolated and wishes aloud that they had simply killed her. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/sudan/. Cf. Amnesty International., "Darfur: Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and Its Consequences."

[51] Amnesty International, “Darfur: Rape as a Weapon of War, Sexual Violence and It’s Consequences.” http://web.amnesty.org/library/print/ENGAFR540762004. This source includes a discussion of the Hakama, the female singers whose songs goad Janjaweed fighters on to acts of sexual violence.

[52] Ijtihad is the interpretation of sacred text in light of current events. It was forbidden to Sunnis when the teachings of al-Ghazali (d. 1111) gradually ‘closed the gates of ijtihad’ in the twelfth century. Shi’ite scholars continue the practice, but only the most senior or their ranks are allowed to practice ijtihad. Arguably, the ultimate quest of modern radical Islamists is, on a theological level, to reopen the gates of ijtihad and to democratize its practice.

[53] The Hakama are an interesting case study in themselves, and a definite circumstantial indicator that the Janjaweed are indeed fifth wave actors. See Jeevan Vasagar and Ewen MacAskill, "Arab Women Singers Complicit in Rape, Says Amnesty Report," Guardian, July 20, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1264901,00.html.

[54] Elizabeth Dauphinée, The Ethics of Researching War: Looking for Bosnia, New Approaches to Conflict Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

[55] Thomas Robbins, "Religious Movements and Violence: A Friendly Critique of the Interpretive Approach," Nova Religio 1, no. 1 (1997): 13-29. Jeffrey Kaplan, "Interpreting the Interpretive Approach: A Friendly Reply to Thomas Robbins," Nova Religio 1, no. 1 (1997): 30-49.

[56] Indeed, my first M. A. thesis at Colorado State University, “Language Planning Policy in the Sudan” was partially the result of in-country research.

[57] I would like to thank members of the Fall 2007 Terrorism and Religious Violence undergraduate class for helping me think through these issues, and pointing to issues—particularly issues from a gender perspective—that I would not have caught. I have had much input from colleagues as well, but have found that the younger students, raised in a time where what to our generation seems fantastic is the norm, have some remarkable insights to offer.

[58] Jeffrey Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000), xxxii-xxxiii.

[59] Gabriel Meyer and James Nicholls, War and Faith in Sudan (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), xiii.

 

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Note: Perspectives on Terrorism invites a diversity of opinions to be presented in articles. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Perspectives on Terrorism or the Terrorism Research Initiative.