Social Identity Group and Human (In)Security: The Case of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)

The Language of New Terrorism: Differences in Psychological Dimensions of Communication in Dabiq and Inspire

“…Based on the analysis of the attacks, and consistent with research on the ideologies of al-Qaeda and ISIS (Kfir, 2015;Olesen & Khosrokhavar, 2009;Roy, 2008;Winter, 2015) and contemporary models of collective action that highlight the role of individual-level factors in driving collective behaviour (Duncan, 2012), we propose that the Western followers of ISIS are more focused on religion and more authoritarian than the Western followers of al-Qaeda. We formulate the following hypotheses:…”

“…The idea that ISIS followers in the West may be more authoritarian and religiously intolerant than al-Qaeda’s is consistent with previous research on the communicative targeting of the two groups. ISIS propaganda has been found to be strongly focused on concepts such as authority and punishment (Kfir, 2015; Winter, 2015). ISIS leaders and their predecessors have used extensively religious concepts such as takfir (i.e., excommunication, which refers to one Muslim declaring another Muslim as a non-believer) to justify violence against out-groups, including Muslim communities not obeying their leadership.…”

Religión e identidad. La amenaza del Estado Islámico en Irak y Siria

“…La hisba -llamada "la policía religiosa"-se encarga de establecer y mantener la legitimidad religiosa (Caris & Reynolds, 2014, p. 16) corrigiendo el comportamiento de los musulmanes al hacerlo acorde a la sharia. Sus actividades incluyen la quema de cigarrillos, drogas y alcohol; la destrucción de tumbas y santuarios que fomenten el politeísmo; garantizar el cumplimiento de la oración; controlar los precios al consumidor; y la implementación de los castigos huddud que incluyen azotes, la crucifixión, la amputación y la decapitación 28 Kfir (2015) asocia el concepto de economía de la religión con la teoría de la identidad social, con lo cual reconoce al Estado Islámico como un productor de la religión que busca generar un mensaje que no puede ser rechazado por los individuos. La receptividad de este mensaje está influenciada por los contextos que le permiten al productor ofrecer bienes y servicios -tangibles e intangibles-para lograr la movilización de los simpatizantes (p. 236).…”

ISIL recruiters as social media influencers: Mechanisms of legitimation by Australian Muslim men

“…SIT has also been highlighted as a theory best suited to analysing "how social cognitive behaviours are associated with group membership" (Hogg and Terry, 2000, p.121). As a result, terrorism scholars have employed SIT in order to better understand how individuals come to identify with terrorist groups (Al Raffie, 2013;Kfir, 2015). In turn, social identity is closely related to the theory of collective identity (Stets and Burke, 2010).…”