Robinson, Glenn E. “The Four Waves of Global Jihad, 1979–2017.” Middle East Policy, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2017): 70–88.

Robinson, Glenn E. “The Four Waves of Global Jihad, 1979–2017.” Middle East Policy, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2017): 70–88.

• Modern Islamism, as distinguished from other forms of Islamic political thought, emerged in the late 19th Century as a response to the issues raised by modernization, urbanization, and imperialism. The emergence of modern Islamism was marked by the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood by Hasan al-Banna in 1928 (70).
• The Brotherhood and other primarily non-violent social movements gave way to increasingly violent Islamism movements by the 1960s. Many Sunnis were inspired, in particular, by the work of Sayyid Qutb, a radical Egyptian thinker who was hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 (70).
• Sayyid Qutb was finally sentenced to death for writing Ma'alim fil-tareeq معالم في الطريق, a manifesto advocating the overthrow of the Egyptian government on the grounds that it was un-Islamic. The book advocated for a global struggle against un-Islamic government, and remains popular in jihadi circles (70).
• Islamism first took strong root among Shias during the 1960s through the writings of Ali Shariati, an academic who sought to blend Islamism with Marxist thought, and Ruhollah Khomeini, who advocated the overthrow of the Shahist government in Iran on the grounds that it was un-Islamic (71).
• Although the intellectual foundations for Islamism were formed by the 1920s and 1930s, and those of violent Islamism had appeared by the 1960s, violent Islamist movements surged during the 1980s due to a combination of disgust at the failure of secular Arab states to provide wealth or security and a sudden wealth of funding from the Gulf (71).
• Violent Islamist and jihadi groups originally focused on local issues, targeting the 'near enemy' of regional governments. Global jihadism emerged following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which prompted the creation of a new minority group of jihadists who focused on global issues rather than discreet national politics (71, 85).
• The author identifies four trends of global jihadism, which defined by set political goals and issues and dominant ideological figures:
• The first wave was between 1979 and 1990, prompted by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It focused on the liberation of all Muslim lands from foreign rule, beginning with Afghanistan, with its chief ideologue as Abdullah Azzam. It lost momentum after the Soviet withdrawal in 1990 and the impracticality of driving non-Muslims out from other parts of the world (72).
• The 1979 Soviet invasion turned the jihadi conflict in Afghanistan, which had previously been a backwater compared to the revolution in Iran and the brief occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, into a center of Islamist activity. Jihadi victories against the Soviets imbued an impression of rising Muslim power (73).
• Abdullah Yusuf Azzam was a Palestinian-Jordanian cleric who argued that it was a religious obligation incumbent upon Muslims to participate in the violent reconquest of occupied Muslim land, the two main battlefields being Afghanistan and Palestine. He was also crucial in generating theological support for suicide bombings, which many argued were sinful (73-74).
• Abdullah Azzam specifically rejected more radical jihadist interpretations, like Ayman al-Zawahiri's version of takfiri jihad directed against apostate regimes in the Muslim world. Abdullah Azzam instead focused narrowly on Muslim lands ruled by non-Muslims (74).
• The Soviet withdrawal in 1989, split the jihadi movement between those who returned home, those following Ayman al-Zawahiri's takfiri line, and those who wanted to take up Abdullah Azzam's call for jihad in Palestine. Intra-jihadi tensions may have been responsible for Abdullah Azzam's assassination in November 1989. The movement died in 1990 when Saudi Arabia refused Osama bin Laden's offer to liberate Kuwait using mujahideen (74-75).
• The second trend was between 1996 and 2011, focusing on destroying the far enemy of America as a precondition to the liberation of the Muslim world. It was born from the failure of jihadist movements in Algeria and Egypt, as disillusioned jihadists instead refocused on the USA. Its chief ideological figure was Osama bin Laden and the movement diminished after his death in 2011 (72).
• There was a general decline of global jihadist movements during the early 1990s, as the refusal of Arab governments to support jihadism led Osama bin Laden and other global jihadis to support Ayman al-Zawahiri's takfiri line. The 1990s had also seen the brutal defeat of Islamist groups in Egypt and Algeria (75-76).
• Osama bin Laden's jihadi ideology was a response to the general failure of Islamism during the 1990s, as he explained the durability of unpopular Arab government by pointing to the support they received from the United States. Reversing Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj's exhortation for jihadis to focus on local governments instead of attacking Israel, Osama bin Laden argued that apostate Arab government could only be toppled after the US had been driven from the Middle East (76).
• The first iteration of this jihadist tendency was in a 1996 track by Osama bin Laden that mentioned the necessity of attacking the far enemy in a polemic against the Saudi government (76). He developed these ideas into a full ideology by 1998, greatly expanding Al-Qaeda and carrying out bombings of US embassies in East Africa (77).
• The actual capacity of Al-Qaeda and its associated ideology was devastated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and never recovered. Al-Qaeda spawned a number of affiliates, like Al-Shabaab, but only Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, based in Yemen, has kept true to its policy of attacks on America. The last force of the movement was demolished with the 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden (77).
• The third trend was between 2003 and 2017, triggered by the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent establishment of a Shia-majority government there. This movement took advantage of chaos in Iraq and Syria to drive for the creation of a Caliphate, and it ended after the destruction of ISIS in 2017. Its chief ideological figures were Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Bakr Naji, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (72). 
• This trend was born with the entry of Abu al-Zarqawi into Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 American invasion. Operating as an Al-Qaeda affiliate, Abu al-Zarqawi stirred up a sectarian civil war against the Shia characterized by extreme violence, earning him a rebuke by Ayman al-Zawahiri (78-79).
• After Abu al-Zarqawi's death in 2006, Al-Qaeda in Iraq declared its independence as the Islamic State in Iraq, with the goal of establishing a separate sharia state in northern Iraq. The group dwindled with al-Zarqawi's charisma, but in 2010 leadership passed to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who reenergized the group. It took major advantage of the Syrian Civil War, expanding into Syria and controlling large areas of the east as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS] (79).
• In 2014, ISIS invaded Iraq from its territories in Syria and captured Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself Caliph and Mosul the capital of his new Caliphate. The group governed territory in eastern Syria and northern Iraq until finally being driven out in 2017 (79).
• The primary ideological differences between Al-Qaeda and other global jihadi groups, and ISIS, is that ISIS prioritized the establishment of a Muslim state where Muslims from all over the Earth can live pious lives under sharia. This approach ignored both national governments and the 'far enemy' argument of Al-Qaeda (80).
• The goals of this trend, represented by ISIS, were actually quite orthodox, as they focused on the establishment of a Caliphate with limited aims beyond its borders. This vision still existed on global dimensions, however, as it envisioned that Caliphate as stretching over the entire Muslim world and attract over 30,000 Muslims from across the globe to fight for that cause (77-78).
• The author suspects that the experience of ISIS will likely encourage other jihadist groups to try to establish their own Islamic states. It is unlikely, however, that these other Islamic states will implement the same anti-Shii sectarianism and extreme violence as ISIS did (81).
• The extreme and exemplary violence practiced by Al-Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS has its ideological justification in Abu Bakr Naji's book 'The Management of Savagery' إدارة التوحش, which calls on jihadis to use extreme violence to displace the state from Muslim areas (80-81).
• "Declaring a caliphate was a stroke of genius, no matter that every major cleric in the Muslim world who weighed in on the subject dismissed Baghdadi’s declaration as wrong-headed on many different levels. For marketing and recruitment purposes, it was the sexiest, most outrageous — and most effective — move Baghdadi could have made, stirring the imagination of some Muslims. For young men willing to come and fight for the caliphate, ISIS promised a sort of Disneyland for jihadis: infinite thrills from doing outlandish things with little real-world accountability. The gore-stained videos that ISIS regularly put out repulsed most Muslims, but captured the imagination of just enough of its target demographic. ISIS never sought the approval of the keepers of Islamic tradition (the ulama), wanting instead to create its own imagined history. Even Zarqawi’s mentor, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, one of the few clerics with a track record of supporting jihadi movements, denounced his former pupil. In the end, the ulama decisively rejected the ISIS program and its ephemeral caliphate" (81).
• The fourth trend began in 2001 and continues to exist. It was triggered by the defeat of the Taliban government in 2001 and the global turn against Islamist and jihadist groups. It seeks to avoid the destruction other Islamist groups have faced by making jihad a personal responsibility to be carried out alone or in small groups. The main ideological source of this trend is Abu Musab al-Suri (72).
• The destruction of the Taliban government in 2001 and the subsequent near eradication of Al-Qaeda created a sense of desperation in jihadi circles. This trend, articulated by Abu Musab al-Suri, focuses on guaranteeing the survival of jihadism in an increasingly hostile world (82).
• Abu Musab al-Suri was a Syrian Muslim Brother who fled to Spain after the defeat of the uprising in Aleppo in 1982. He traveled between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Spain until his flight from that country for involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He was captured in Pakistan in 2005 and remanded to American custody (82).
• Abu Musab al-Suri began articulating his ideology following the defeat of the Brotherhood uprising in Syria in 1982, seeking to explain and learn from his loss. His theories were further informed by Al-Qaeda's 2001 defeat in Afghanistan, a reflection on which forms the basis of his book, 'Call to Global Islamic Resistance' الدعوة إلى (82) المقاومة الإسلامية العالمية. 
• The mobilizing theories of this movement were generated by Abu Musab al-Suri, who called for a more pragmatic approach to jihad and sharply criticized 'salafi-jihadi' groups who refused to cooperate with other Islamists because of doctrinal differences (83).
• This movement also criticized the takfiri jihadism developed by Ayman al-Zahawiri for divide Muslims. It also focused on the power of violence in jihad and characterized jihad as a global war between Muslims and the USA, requiring total war, including attacks on civilians (83).
• The tactics recommended by Abu Musab al-Suri were the adoption of leaderless jihad, which encouraged individual Muslims to attack their enemies through personal violence as a way of encouraging other jihadists elsewhere; the use of technology and media to spread jihadi messages to a wider audience; and the use of information technology to link individuals jihadis across great distances (83-84).
• The influence of Abu Musab al-Suri's ideas is evident in ISIS's use of media and the internet to effectively disseminate its message. His strategies have also been increasingly adopted following the defeat of ISIS, as the organization is forced to abandon its territorial ambitions. Another prominent jihadist influenced by his ideas was Anwar al-Awlaki, who used the internet to spread English-language sermons on jihadism until his assassination by the US in 2011 (84).
• The author argues that the small-scale attacks advocated by Abu Musab al-Suri cannot pose a major threat to the West and that other tendencies within global jihadism will die out unless the West or its allies majorly fuck up and trigger another crisis from which a new jihadist tendency can be born (85).
• Global jihadism has always been a fringe movement, even within Islamism. From the 1980s to the present, the total number of those fighting for global jihadism was around 100,000 men. Global jihadists have only been able to exercise out-sized influence because of their extreme and spectacular violence (86).