In the framework of the recruitment of Syrian and Lebanese fighters combating today in Syria, this paper aims to further problematise the processes in which individuals decide to disrupt their ordinary lives to engage with "Jihadist" armed groups. Such processes are frequently studied and tackled by government programmes and NGO practices aimed at the "rehabilitation" of former fighters in various countries ranging from Muslim majority states to European or North American states. Likewise, some terrorism scholars still tend to trace a linear path to identify the social and psychological causes which push individuals to join militant groups, and trace the causes which, in some cases, lead to subsequent disengagement from fighting and the ideology involved. This study rather shows the cyclic and changing nature of life choices and circumstances which influence Jihadist fighters and supporters. By doing so, it embraces the scholarly approach according to which "extremist" armed groups should be studied and understood as any conventional social group. In specific, this primary research is based on ten in-depth interviews conducted in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli with Syrian and Lebanese ex-fighters, and with sympathisers of the so-called "Jihadi ideology" who never took up weapons. To interpret the narratives I collected, I will intentionally draw on both critical and mainstream security-focused bodies of literature on political violence, "radicalisation", and extremism. While the experiences recounted by the ex fighters will be analysed through the two constructed categories of contingency and intentionality, the Jihadist supporters who never joined an armed group rather point to how there is no linear and unilateral progression from "extremist" beliefs to violence. The survival of such forms of political violence, ultimately, challenges the survival of politically biased knowledge and the programmes that the latter informs.
