Changing Warscapes, Changing Islamists? Religion, Organization, Strategic Context and New Approaches to Armed Islamist Insurgencies

This framing essay to the Special Issue on Islamists in Warscapes argues for the value of engaging with the concept of warscapes, developed primarily by anthropologists of violence in Africa, for theorizing about armed Islamist groups in protracted conflict situations. The warscapes concept better captures the nature of many of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond by focusing on its protracted but intermittent nature, temporal and spatial variability, international and transnational dimensions, and production of wartime orders. Within this framework, this article and Special Issue focus on armed Islamist groups, asking whether and why they perform differently than non-Islamist groups and how they evolve through embeddedness in warscapes. The article reviews literature on protracted conflict and warscapes, armed Islamist groups and jihadists, and the study of religion in conflict. It concludes by arguing that the warscapes literature can significantly add to our understanding of armed Islamist groups, and that focusing on armed Islamist groups can enrich the study of warscapes.