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The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity
Winner of the 2021 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology, sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe (a section of the American Anthropological Association).
No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-called jihadists seem opposed to universalism itself. In a radical departure from conventional wisdom on the topic, The Universal Enemy argues that transnational jihadists are engaged in their own form of these fighters struggle to realize an Islamist vision directed at all of humanity, transcending racial and cultural difference.
Anthropologist and attorney Darryl Li reconceptualizes jihad as armed transnational solidarity under conditions of American empire, revisiting a pivotal moment after the Cold War when ethnic cleansing in the Balkans dominated global headlines. Muslim volunteers came from distant lands to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside their co-religionists, offering themselves as an alternative to the US-led international community. Li highlights the parallels and overlaps between transnational jihads and other universalisms such as the War on Terror, United Nations peacekeeping, and socialist Non-Alignment. Developed from more than a decade of research with former fighters in a half-dozen countries, The Universal Enemy explores the relationship between jihad and American empire to shed critical light on both.
No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-called jihadists seem opposed to universalism itself. In a radical departure from conventional wisdom on the topic, The Universal Enemy argues that transnational jihadists are engaged in their own form of these fighters struggle to realize an Islamist vision directed at all of humanity, transcending racial and cultural difference.
Anthropologist and attorney Darryl Li reconceptualizes jihad as armed transnational solidarity under conditions of American empire, revisiting a pivotal moment after the Cold War when ethnic cleansing in the Balkans dominated global headlines. Muslim volunteers came from distant lands to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside their co-religionists, offering themselves as an alternative to the US-led international community. Li highlights the parallels and overlaps between transnational jihads and other universalisms such as the War on Terror, United Nations peacekeeping, and socialist Non-Alignment. Developed from more than a decade of research with former fighters in a half-dozen countries, The Universal Enemy explores the relationship between jihad and American empire to shed critical light on both.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published December 10, 2019
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December 22, 2019
While due respect to the cliche about not judging books by their covers, this book has one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen, let alone on an academic text. Darryl Li is a guerrilla anthropologist, legal expert, and by any measure one of the all-around most brilliant people writing in the era of the so-called Global War on Terrorism. This book is his attempt to analyze the modern concept of "jihad" in a clear-eyed way, outside of the prism of the liberal national security state and conservative racial anxiety. The result is radical in the truest sense of the world – one of the most unique books ever written on this conflict.
Li characterizes jihad as a non-state, transnational movement aimed at building a universal human order transcending race, language and geography. We tend to think of jihadism as being opposed to universalism, as the "universal enemy" of humanity itself, when in reality it is another path to achieving the same goal. The universalism of the jihad has sometimes come into conflict with liberal and socialist universalisms and has sometimes overlapped with them. The book takes as a case study the armed "mujahid" volunteers who came to fight in defense of the Bosnian Muslims during the early 1990s genocide that they suffered. Li spends much time with former volunteers around the world, mostly Arab but also some Pakistanis and Jamaicans. He does an admirable job of neither condemning nor praising his subjects, though his decision not to condemn them will likely be felt as radical to the reader. His expansive command of language(s) and history is humbling.
The jihadist has become a figure like a pirate or highwayman, a one-dimensional picture of evil. As is often the case with things human, the reality is more complex. The word jihad itself is used in this book in the most value-neutral sense I can remember encountering ever since the current era of war started. People have joined modern jihads to fight on behalf of a universal idea of human brotherhood that is theoretically capacious enough to encompass all mankind, Li argues, using his subjects as examples. He neither defends the jihad nor succumbs to stereotypes about it. Interestingly he compares jihadist universalism to the universalism of socialist and liberal-international Muslims who also found their way to Bosnia via different means during the same period.
I would argue that the volunteers who went to Bosnia were more sympathetic than later jihadist generations, as they were fighting on behalf of a cause viewed as just by most of the world. The picture has become much more complicated in the decades since. The movement reached its nadir with the blood-soaked parody known as the "Islamic State," after which very few people still had illusions that the jihad was a project with constructive or emancipatory possibilities. Generally speaking, the jihad as presently constituted is a doomed project because it offers little of value to non-Muslims, women or even to non-Salafi Muslims for the most part. Nonetheless as Li demonstrates there are still lessons to be learned from the example of a universalist, pan-racial movement expressing solidarity across borders, including through armed force. Not all of these guys are one-dimensional demons, true. The problem is that in its mainstream a once-noble concept has been hijacked by sectarian maniacs whom Muslims have historically described as khwarij. This is an emergency that we may not have the luxury to analyze academically.
Reading this book as a journalist I was impressed with the material and access gained by the author. This is truly a mini-alternate history of the world, seen from the perspective of those on its margins. Nonetheless the book is written as an academic study. The arguments about universalism and political philosophy are explicit, not implicitly conveyed as part of a narrative story that Li clearly had the resources to write. It is an academic book, written in avowedly academic style. As such it's not for everyone. But I would classify it as required reading for anyone who has been concerned with the Global War on Terrorism and its consequences. Li's critiques of the terrorism analysis industry are damning and he is not making them from the cheap seats. I hope to review the book at greater length elsewhere after interviewing him. It's a unique achievement.
Li characterizes jihad as a non-state, transnational movement aimed at building a universal human order transcending race, language and geography. We tend to think of jihadism as being opposed to universalism, as the "universal enemy" of humanity itself, when in reality it is another path to achieving the same goal. The universalism of the jihad has sometimes come into conflict with liberal and socialist universalisms and has sometimes overlapped with them. The book takes as a case study the armed "mujahid" volunteers who came to fight in defense of the Bosnian Muslims during the early 1990s genocide that they suffered. Li spends much time with former volunteers around the world, mostly Arab but also some Pakistanis and Jamaicans. He does an admirable job of neither condemning nor praising his subjects, though his decision not to condemn them will likely be felt as radical to the reader. His expansive command of language(s) and history is humbling.
The jihadist has become a figure like a pirate or highwayman, a one-dimensional picture of evil. As is often the case with things human, the reality is more complex. The word jihad itself is used in this book in the most value-neutral sense I can remember encountering ever since the current era of war started. People have joined modern jihads to fight on behalf of a universal idea of human brotherhood that is theoretically capacious enough to encompass all mankind, Li argues, using his subjects as examples. He neither defends the jihad nor succumbs to stereotypes about it. Interestingly he compares jihadist universalism to the universalism of socialist and liberal-international Muslims who also found their way to Bosnia via different means during the same period.
I would argue that the volunteers who went to Bosnia were more sympathetic than later jihadist generations, as they were fighting on behalf of a cause viewed as just by most of the world. The picture has become much more complicated in the decades since. The movement reached its nadir with the blood-soaked parody known as the "Islamic State," after which very few people still had illusions that the jihad was a project with constructive or emancipatory possibilities. Generally speaking, the jihad as presently constituted is a doomed project because it offers little of value to non-Muslims, women or even to non-Salafi Muslims for the most part. Nonetheless as Li demonstrates there are still lessons to be learned from the example of a universalist, pan-racial movement expressing solidarity across borders, including through armed force. Not all of these guys are one-dimensional demons, true. The problem is that in its mainstream a once-noble concept has been hijacked by sectarian maniacs whom Muslims have historically described as khwarij. This is an emergency that we may not have the luxury to analyze academically.
Reading this book as a journalist I was impressed with the material and access gained by the author. This is truly a mini-alternate history of the world, seen from the perspective of those on its margins. Nonetheless the book is written as an academic study. The arguments about universalism and political philosophy are explicit, not implicitly conveyed as part of a narrative story that Li clearly had the resources to write. It is an academic book, written in avowedly academic style. As such it's not for everyone. But I would classify it as required reading for anyone who has been concerned with the Global War on Terrorism and its consequences. Li's critiques of the terrorism analysis industry are damning and he is not making them from the cheap seats. I hope to review the book at greater length elsewhere after interviewing him. It's a unique achievement.
June 19, 2020
The conflict in Bosnia that began in 1992 opened an arena of jihad on the European mainland that had previously never been considered by global mujahideen as a potential site of defending Muslim populations. Bosniak Muslims being attacked by their Serb neighbours and troops evoked imagery of ‘white’ Muslims requiring protection from ethnic cleansing. Over the course of the following three years, Bosnia would attract a number of foreign fighters and humanitarians from across the Muslim world, including from Muslim diaspora populations in the West – a story that, this far, has been inadequately studied.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If the global War on Terror has taught us anything, it is that it is very easy to write badly about Muslims, particularly those who are engaged in conflict in various contexts around the world. There are a few texts that stand out in this tradition that should be noted and praised. ‘The Enemy We Created’ by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, as well as ‘No Good Men Among the Living’ by Anand Gopal should be read as truly exceptional for their sound and empathetic ethnographic work.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Darryl Li’s ‘The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity,’ has been perhaps one of the most anticipated books within the field of jihad scholarship in recent years. The work showcases, and benefits from, the author’s culturally robust anthropology background, his fluency in a number of languages his subjects speak, and understanding of the legal and political complexity of their lives. Perhaps more than anything else, it is his ability to write of the men and women in this world with a great deal of empathy – which has culminated in a work that does not just speak of the past, but also of who we are now.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
From the very start of the book, Li refuses to engage with the polemics of terms, preferring instead to write of the history from the perspective of those who lived it. For Li, to call someone a ‘terrorist’ is to deny them any political dimension and to reduce them to false moralistic terms [p.25]. This does not mean at all that somehow Li is apologising for the decisions or actions of any actor; rather, he does an incredible job of remaining truthful to the history by letting the subjects themselves describe their own lives:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“This book argues that the most useful way of understanding the contentious phenomenon of the jihad in Bosnia is through the lens of universalism. Thinking more clearly about questions of universalism will help to make the jihad legible in political terms rather than in pathologizing or moralistic ones. To tell this story, I have resorted to a kind of ethnographic history from below—one that unfolds across different regions and seeks grounding in local contexts without being limited by them. Such an approach also sheds light on other universalist projects, especially more powerful ones organized along nation-state lines. It traces the Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations peacekeeping, and the Global War on Terror in ways rarely apprehended before and provides a set of terms for comparing them.” [p.9]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It is this story of universalism that is so central to Darryl Li’s book, but it is of a universalism that disrupts so many of our assumptions about ‘foreign fighters’ and notions of umma as he complicates what constitutes the ‘local’ versus what is understood as ‘foreign’. Were all Arabs present in the Bosnian jihad ‘foreign’ fighters with a separatist mentality as has been regularly depicted in the works of popular terrorologists? As Li reminds us, those who come from foreign lands were not more foreign than the International Community troops and bureaucrats who had entered the conflict during that same period, yet their treatment was very different to the latter but – as Li goes on to show – the foreign mujahideen exceed the local/foreign distinction [p.10].
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This history has been skewed by the global War on Terror, as basic bigoted mistakes by so-called terrorism experts have resulted in key figures being presented as arch-terrorists. For instance, it is in Darryl Li’s meticulous attention to detail that almost two decades into the War on Terror the record is finally set straight about how supposed experts had been conflating two different people named Abu ‘Abd al-‘Aziz for 25 years. This type of amateurish confusion may sound like the stuff of farce, but it had serious implications. As the early work – in this case that of Evan Kohlmann – was never checked, the community of terrorism ‘experts’ spent years replicating one another’s work until they had established their own ‘facts’:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“Among the manifold ironies of this echo chamber of follies is that even when experts serve state imperatives they also act autonomously, indeed recklessly: Kohlmann’s mistake seems to have been his alone and does not appear on US government terrorism lists. Terrorism experts are less faithful scribes of empire than they are enterprising vendors eagerly hawking new wares in the hopes of catching the eye of a fickle and easily distracted patron.” [p.35]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As an antidote to this flawed epistemology, the first part of the book opens with the story of the first Abu ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, one of the most significant figures in the Bosnian jihad, who was instrumental in organising foreign fighters’ passage into the country. His own entry into Bosnia was very much reminiscent of the call so many have had to make, to place one’s life on the line for others, a call intimately familiar to the oppressed [p.30]. Li describes Abu ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and those men who joined him as ansar – those who have come to the conflict as helpers. This wasn’t as peculiar a choice for words as some might think; Li would go on to interview others, for example in London, where comparisons would be made between the footage from the Omarska concentration camp and the images of the Holocaust [p.45].
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The presence of the foreign mujahideen did not come without points of contention. Funding from Gulf countries led to the emergence of a particular theological curiosity: a little booklet entitled ‘Notions That Must Be Corrected’, which presented a very specifically Salafi view of Islam and was out of congruence with the majority of Islamic worship and practice within Bosnia itself [p.53], which largely adhered to a Hanafi jurisprudence and variations of Sufi theology. This led to some resentment among the local Bosniaks, though Li, once again, is careful not to exaggerate its scale and impact, particularly within the structure of the main foreign mujahid unit – the Katiba [p.82]. Within the Katiba, there was a predominant view that they were Ansar, helpers to the Bosniak people, and therefore should subsume themselves as best as they could into the formal structures of resistance, albeit with their respective flavour of Islamic practice [p.54].
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It is in the middle of this merging of cultures within the context of fighting and resistance that a limited universalism emerged, one that centred the notion of Umma and connected Muslims across the world by their faith rather than the minutiae of Islamic religious cultural manifestations. This jihad, in Li’s view, is one form of universalism that can be understood as connecting people within its specific circumstances:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“And if nationalism can realize the universal in any number of ways, it can also connect the particular to different kinds of universalism. In the case of Muslims in Bosnia, all of the things that made them deficient in terms of national categories—the overlap of apparently incongruous identities such as Muslimness and Europeanness—also multiplied potential points of connection with the outside world. They could speak in multiple universalist idioms: not simply Western versus Islamic, but within and across those categories as well. Bosnia, with the messiness of its categories and names, should be understood as an exemplar, and not an exception, of the ambiguities of nationalism and universalism.” [p.61]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Above all, Li’s notion of universalism rests on the sense of solidarity – expressed through political theology – connecting Muslims across the world. What Li is quick to highlight, however, is the way that the very notion of political theology is too often tied to the political theology of the state itself – privileging the latter above any other form of solidarity. The state of exception allows the sovereign to suspend the law as part of the moral theology of the state:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This logic of exception withdraws the extraordinary from the ordinary while remaining in relationship with it: sovereign power possesses violence that can transgress all law but that is nevertheless always legal—a paradoxical framing… [p.84]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As foreigners coming to Bosnia for a multitude of reasons – many of whom ending-up engaged in the jihad, some even predating the genocide – a moment emerged where the hegemony of liberalism was brought into question. The jihad produced ‘a’ universalism, with its own set of ‘exclusions and inequalities’ but based on a different organising set of principles. Some of the complexities of multiculturalism within liberalism took on entirely different meanings, as Bosniaks who ‘benefitted’ from ‘whiteness’ as understood within the generally known “hierarchies of race” were eventually, “partially offset by the perception that they were less authentically Muslim than Arabs” [p.104]. A somewhat bizarre inversion of hierarchies that have existed in other parts of the world, but Li is careful in his presentation of this complexity as being a very specific phenomenon.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The presence of those who were already in Bosnia, or joined the jihad for the specific purpose of engaging in fighting, took on meanings that in many ways have defied the received wisdoms of the global War on Terror. In many ways, the most remarkable aspect of Darryl Li’s work, is the way in which he has been able to disrupt hegemonic narratives on what the Bosnian jihad meant, but also about who the men involved were. This level of analytic complexity could only have been achieved by spending considerable time trying to understand these men in their own language and through their own words. This is very hard and very necessary work that takes time, but as mentioned at the start of this review, also requires a great deal of empathy. Li understands the violence of the world we live in, which is why he acknowledges:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
the Global War on Terror has been configured as an intensively litigious space—contrary to accusations of “lawlessness,” it has been a campaign marked by an anxiousness to frame actions in legal terms, even if done so in ways that may seem to clash with liberal norms and commitments to the rule of law. [p.18]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
‘The Universal Enemy’, thus, stands as an antidote to so much that has been written on the subject that is so wrong. I was in Bosnia in May 2007, when Li’s expertise on the region was well established. I had the privilege of interviewing a number of the men mentioned in this book and learnt about their lives and the difficulties they were having. Seeing this book out, and seeing how Li has done their stories justice in a way that I was never able to do is significant for me personally, but I know will mean everything to the men who have been subject to so much violence. These men who literally placed their lives on the line for the sake of protecting the Bosniak people, but had their involvement pathologised by the racist logic of the global War on Terror, and thus had much of their nobility reduced to something that was dangerous.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My hope for this book is that it will go on to represent another important reminder that there are ways that we can try and understand one another if we choose to do so. If we are willing to take the time to listen to each other, to listen to the multitude of ways in which we are complex, beyond the reductive tropes that seek to land violence on our lives. If we can do these things, we may actually find a way through the global War on Terror and the many other structural injustices that plague our world.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If the global War on Terror has taught us anything, it is that it is very easy to write badly about Muslims, particularly those who are engaged in conflict in various contexts around the world. There are a few texts that stand out in this tradition that should be noted and praised. ‘The Enemy We Created’ by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, as well as ‘No Good Men Among the Living’ by Anand Gopal should be read as truly exceptional for their sound and empathetic ethnographic work.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Darryl Li’s ‘The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity,’ has been perhaps one of the most anticipated books within the field of jihad scholarship in recent years. The work showcases, and benefits from, the author’s culturally robust anthropology background, his fluency in a number of languages his subjects speak, and understanding of the legal and political complexity of their lives. Perhaps more than anything else, it is his ability to write of the men and women in this world with a great deal of empathy – which has culminated in a work that does not just speak of the past, but also of who we are now.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
From the very start of the book, Li refuses to engage with the polemics of terms, preferring instead to write of the history from the perspective of those who lived it. For Li, to call someone a ‘terrorist’ is to deny them any political dimension and to reduce them to false moralistic terms [p.25]. This does not mean at all that somehow Li is apologising for the decisions or actions of any actor; rather, he does an incredible job of remaining truthful to the history by letting the subjects themselves describe their own lives:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“This book argues that the most useful way of understanding the contentious phenomenon of the jihad in Bosnia is through the lens of universalism. Thinking more clearly about questions of universalism will help to make the jihad legible in political terms rather than in pathologizing or moralistic ones. To tell this story, I have resorted to a kind of ethnographic history from below—one that unfolds across different regions and seeks grounding in local contexts without being limited by them. Such an approach also sheds light on other universalist projects, especially more powerful ones organized along nation-state lines. It traces the Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations peacekeeping, and the Global War on Terror in ways rarely apprehended before and provides a set of terms for comparing them.” [p.9]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It is this story of universalism that is so central to Darryl Li’s book, but it is of a universalism that disrupts so many of our assumptions about ‘foreign fighters’ and notions of umma as he complicates what constitutes the ‘local’ versus what is understood as ‘foreign’. Were all Arabs present in the Bosnian jihad ‘foreign’ fighters with a separatist mentality as has been regularly depicted in the works of popular terrorologists? As Li reminds us, those who come from foreign lands were not more foreign than the International Community troops and bureaucrats who had entered the conflict during that same period, yet their treatment was very different to the latter but – as Li goes on to show – the foreign mujahideen exceed the local/foreign distinction [p.10].
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This history has been skewed by the global War on Terror, as basic bigoted mistakes by so-called terrorism experts have resulted in key figures being presented as arch-terrorists. For instance, it is in Darryl Li’s meticulous attention to detail that almost two decades into the War on Terror the record is finally set straight about how supposed experts had been conflating two different people named Abu ‘Abd al-‘Aziz for 25 years. This type of amateurish confusion may sound like the stuff of farce, but it had serious implications. As the early work – in this case that of Evan Kohlmann – was never checked, the community of terrorism ‘experts’ spent years replicating one another’s work until they had established their own ‘facts’:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“Among the manifold ironies of this echo chamber of follies is that even when experts serve state imperatives they also act autonomously, indeed recklessly: Kohlmann’s mistake seems to have been his alone and does not appear on US government terrorism lists. Terrorism experts are less faithful scribes of empire than they are enterprising vendors eagerly hawking new wares in the hopes of catching the eye of a fickle and easily distracted patron.” [p.35]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As an antidote to this flawed epistemology, the first part of the book opens with the story of the first Abu ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, one of the most significant figures in the Bosnian jihad, who was instrumental in organising foreign fighters’ passage into the country. His own entry into Bosnia was very much reminiscent of the call so many have had to make, to place one’s life on the line for others, a call intimately familiar to the oppressed [p.30]. Li describes Abu ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and those men who joined him as ansar – those who have come to the conflict as helpers. This wasn’t as peculiar a choice for words as some might think; Li would go on to interview others, for example in London, where comparisons would be made between the footage from the Omarska concentration camp and the images of the Holocaust [p.45].
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The presence of the foreign mujahideen did not come without points of contention. Funding from Gulf countries led to the emergence of a particular theological curiosity: a little booklet entitled ‘Notions That Must Be Corrected’, which presented a very specifically Salafi view of Islam and was out of congruence with the majority of Islamic worship and practice within Bosnia itself [p.53], which largely adhered to a Hanafi jurisprudence and variations of Sufi theology. This led to some resentment among the local Bosniaks, though Li, once again, is careful not to exaggerate its scale and impact, particularly within the structure of the main foreign mujahid unit – the Katiba [p.82]. Within the Katiba, there was a predominant view that they were Ansar, helpers to the Bosniak people, and therefore should subsume themselves as best as they could into the formal structures of resistance, albeit with their respective flavour of Islamic practice [p.54].
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It is in the middle of this merging of cultures within the context of fighting and resistance that a limited universalism emerged, one that centred the notion of Umma and connected Muslims across the world by their faith rather than the minutiae of Islamic religious cultural manifestations. This jihad, in Li’s view, is one form of universalism that can be understood as connecting people within its specific circumstances:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“And if nationalism can realize the universal in any number of ways, it can also connect the particular to different kinds of universalism. In the case of Muslims in Bosnia, all of the things that made them deficient in terms of national categories—the overlap of apparently incongruous identities such as Muslimness and Europeanness—also multiplied potential points of connection with the outside world. They could speak in multiple universalist idioms: not simply Western versus Islamic, but within and across those categories as well. Bosnia, with the messiness of its categories and names, should be understood as an exemplar, and not an exception, of the ambiguities of nationalism and universalism.” [p.61]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Above all, Li’s notion of universalism rests on the sense of solidarity – expressed through political theology – connecting Muslims across the world. What Li is quick to highlight, however, is the way that the very notion of political theology is too often tied to the political theology of the state itself – privileging the latter above any other form of solidarity. The state of exception allows the sovereign to suspend the law as part of the moral theology of the state:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This logic of exception withdraws the extraordinary from the ordinary while remaining in relationship with it: sovereign power possesses violence that can transgress all law but that is nevertheless always legal—a paradoxical framing… [p.84]
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As foreigners coming to Bosnia for a multitude of reasons – many of whom ending-up engaged in the jihad, some even predating the genocide – a moment emerged where the hegemony of liberalism was brought into question. The jihad produced ‘a’ universalism, with its own set of ‘exclusions and inequalities’ but based on a different organising set of principles. Some of the complexities of multiculturalism within liberalism took on entirely different meanings, as Bosniaks who ‘benefitted’ from ‘whiteness’ as understood within the generally known “hierarchies of race” were eventually, “partially offset by the perception that they were less authentically Muslim than Arabs” [p.104]. A somewhat bizarre inversion of hierarchies that have existed in other parts of the world, but Li is careful in his presentation of this complexity as being a very specific phenomenon.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The presence of those who were already in Bosnia, or joined the jihad for the specific purpose of engaging in fighting, took on meanings that in many ways have defied the received wisdoms of the global War on Terror. In many ways, the most remarkable aspect of Darryl Li’s work, is the way in which he has been able to disrupt hegemonic narratives on what the Bosnian jihad meant, but also about who the men involved were. This level of analytic complexity could only have been achieved by spending considerable time trying to understand these men in their own language and through their own words. This is very hard and very necessary work that takes time, but as mentioned at the start of this review, also requires a great deal of empathy. Li understands the violence of the world we live in, which is why he acknowledges:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
the Global War on Terror has been configured as an intensively litigious space—contrary to accusations of “lawlessness,” it has been a campaign marked by an anxiousness to frame actions in legal terms, even if done so in ways that may seem to clash with liberal norms and commitments to the rule of law. [p.18]
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‘The Universal Enemy’, thus, stands as an antidote to so much that has been written on the subject that is so wrong. I was in Bosnia in May 2007, when Li’s expertise on the region was well established. I had the privilege of interviewing a number of the men mentioned in this book and learnt about their lives and the difficulties they were having. Seeing this book out, and seeing how Li has done their stories justice in a way that I was never able to do is significant for me personally, but I know will mean everything to the men who have been subject to so much violence. These men who literally placed their lives on the line for the sake of protecting the Bosniak people, but had their involvement pathologised by the racist logic of the global War on Terror, and thus had much of their nobility reduced to something that was dangerous.
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My hope for this book is that it will go on to represent another important reminder that there are ways that we can try and understand one another if we choose to do so. If we are willing to take the time to listen to each other, to listen to the multitude of ways in which we are complex, beyond the reductive tropes that seek to land violence on our lives. If we can do these things, we may actually find a way through the global War on Terror and the many other structural injustices that plague our world.
March 9, 2021
Full disclosure: Darryl is on my thesis committee at the University of Chicago and I work with him closely.
Okay, with that said, this is a phenomenal text. I would say the key concept is to look at transnational jihadism away from the lens of the nation-state. He moves beyond 'foreign jihadists' to see the many layers of relations and identities that form how people arrived into the Bosnian war. Identities that get erased by this universal category.
Darryl is interested in removing the normative/moral claims of universalisms such as jihad to see its similarities in other universalist projects (the three he engages are the non-aligned movement, UN peacekeeping, and the Global War on Terror GWoT). On page 10 he notes: My concern here is to highlight the structural dilemmas that universalisms share. Perhaps the starkest way to bring this out is to juxtapose mujahids and peacekeepers."
On page 14 he writes, "universalism in this book is a question of aspiration, not a claim of empirical reality, normative validity, or explanatory power."
He is interested in how universalisms are always aspirational claims and embedded in differential power relations. A couple more quotes may help: "The logic of universalism always plays out in lived situations striated by unequal relations of power." (59)
"Universalisms must translate ideals directed at all of humanity into reality in the face of lived differences." (105)
Lastly, the critique of the 'universal' of 'the international community' and the US' role to defend the universal of 'democracy' on behalf of the universal 'humanity' is great.
This is only touching on a minuscule portion of this ethnography but I really enjoyed it. It highlights what I see as anthropology's strong points as a discipline; which is rich ethnographic material that can't be easily coded for quantitative analyses. Also; worth saying, his writing is really clear and pleasurable to read. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
Okay, with that said, this is a phenomenal text. I would say the key concept is to look at transnational jihadism away from the lens of the nation-state. He moves beyond 'foreign jihadists' to see the many layers of relations and identities that form how people arrived into the Bosnian war. Identities that get erased by this universal category.
Darryl is interested in removing the normative/moral claims of universalisms such as jihad to see its similarities in other universalist projects (the three he engages are the non-aligned movement, UN peacekeeping, and the Global War on Terror GWoT). On page 10 he notes: My concern here is to highlight the structural dilemmas that universalisms share. Perhaps the starkest way to bring this out is to juxtapose mujahids and peacekeepers."
On page 14 he writes, "universalism in this book is a question of aspiration, not a claim of empirical reality, normative validity, or explanatory power."
He is interested in how universalisms are always aspirational claims and embedded in differential power relations. A couple more quotes may help: "The logic of universalism always plays out in lived situations striated by unequal relations of power." (59)
"Universalisms must translate ideals directed at all of humanity into reality in the face of lived differences." (105)
Lastly, the critique of the 'universal' of 'the international community' and the US' role to defend the universal of 'democracy' on behalf of the universal 'humanity' is great.
This is only touching on a minuscule portion of this ethnography but I really enjoyed it. It highlights what I see as anthropology's strong points as a discipline; which is rich ethnographic material that can't be easily coded for quantitative analyses. Also; worth saying, his writing is really clear and pleasurable to read. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
Read
November 2, 2022class was cancelled so i will nawwwt be reading the last 2 chapters
July 21, 2023
Really interesting multidisciplinary approach. This book made me reconsider Salafi Islam
December 15, 2023
I just read this book as a thriller story!! It is in fact an academic book by a human rights lawyer and anthropologist, turning to ethnography to tell tales international law cannot quite grasp. I know basically nothing about international law, the Middle East, the war on terror or Bosnia. But I do enjoy reading good ethnography tackling concepts I haven’t thought deeply about before! This book is so interestingly structured and using wide ranging evidence from Islamic scholars, all sorts of archives and very difficult to access protagonists described generally with a lot of warmth and attention to situational detail.
I found the book because the terrible situation in Palestine has led me to want to know more about the history of the “global war on terror” and the terrible use of language adopted by the governments of US’ allies here in Northern Europe. When everyone walking in solidarity with Palestine is called supporters of terrorism, there is something terribly wrong. We are all looking at each other here, saying “did my prime minister just call me a terrorist for walking for ceasefire?” Good to hear from a scholar like Li that the concept of “terrorist” is in fact quite useless for understanding anything about how the world really works.
Now, this book is of course about a specific islamicist battalion aiding the Muslim state in the war in Bosnia and the trajectories of the international combatants before and after, as their rights to citizenship was gained and revoked. I probably missed half the information in the dense stories and at times higher level Islamic debates. But it is all told as a very good story, where you want to unpack the concept even if you don’t quite know your hadiths and suras or struggle to keep track of all the characters reappearing multiple times in slightly different contexts. I also love the phrasing “…and the problem of solidarity” in the title. What when white North europeans start showing strange solidarities? What happens when we stand in solidarity and are all called “terrorists”? I am using the book to draw highly personal threads out of it, as I feel its richness invites further exploration along very diverse refractive paths, opening up new spaces of discovery and reflection.
Of course Li is also a long time good friend of two of my good friends who studied in the States, even if I have only met him once 25 years ago. I am proud to have such brilliant and courageous people in my networks :).
I found the book because the terrible situation in Palestine has led me to want to know more about the history of the “global war on terror” and the terrible use of language adopted by the governments of US’ allies here in Northern Europe. When everyone walking in solidarity with Palestine is called supporters of terrorism, there is something terribly wrong. We are all looking at each other here, saying “did my prime minister just call me a terrorist for walking for ceasefire?” Good to hear from a scholar like Li that the concept of “terrorist” is in fact quite useless for understanding anything about how the world really works.
Now, this book is of course about a specific islamicist battalion aiding the Muslim state in the war in Bosnia and the trajectories of the international combatants before and after, as their rights to citizenship was gained and revoked. I probably missed half the information in the dense stories and at times higher level Islamic debates. But it is all told as a very good story, where you want to unpack the concept even if you don’t quite know your hadiths and suras or struggle to keep track of all the characters reappearing multiple times in slightly different contexts. I also love the phrasing “…and the problem of solidarity” in the title. What when white North europeans start showing strange solidarities? What happens when we stand in solidarity and are all called “terrorists”? I am using the book to draw highly personal threads out of it, as I feel its richness invites further exploration along very diverse refractive paths, opening up new spaces of discovery and reflection.
Of course Li is also a long time good friend of two of my good friends who studied in the States, even if I have only met him once 25 years ago. I am proud to have such brilliant and courageous people in my networks :).
January 26, 2024
Holy half a book of citations Batman!
An excellent book and interesting perspective on how Mujahidism is itself a form of universalism much in the same way liberalism and socialism are. The book is very dense, which is great but requires a more deliberate reading style than I am used to lest I miss anything. Straight forwardly written, Li's understated humour and derision towards the supporters of empire were welcomed. My only issue with the book is self inflcited: I do not know too much about this subject yet and must read more. The book is not for beginners like myself, but appreciated many of the connections to history (like the man named after Sukarno!!!).
I also wonder a little of Li's choice to research the Bosnian war in particular. It is hard to compare an informal system such as the broad network of Mujahidism and the more formalized systems like the EU, NATO, etc. Furthermore I understand the choice since Bosnia is both European and Muslim which makes an interesting comparison since a variety of actors are at play here. But I am not 100% sure he sticks the landing. At times I miss a little of what is being said, but again perhaps I just have to read more on the subject.
An excellent book and interesting perspective on how Mujahidism is itself a form of universalism much in the same way liberalism and socialism are. The book is very dense, which is great but requires a more deliberate reading style than I am used to lest I miss anything. Straight forwardly written, Li's understated humour and derision towards the supporters of empire were welcomed. My only issue with the book is self inflcited: I do not know too much about this subject yet and must read more. The book is not for beginners like myself, but appreciated many of the connections to history (like the man named after Sukarno!!!).
I also wonder a little of Li's choice to research the Bosnian war in particular. It is hard to compare an informal system such as the broad network of Mujahidism and the more formalized systems like the EU, NATO, etc. Furthermore I understand the choice since Bosnia is both European and Muslim which makes an interesting comparison since a variety of actors are at play here. But I am not 100% sure he sticks the landing. At times I miss a little of what is being said, but again perhaps I just have to read more on the subject.
February 19, 2023
Valuable insights into the specifics of foreign fighters’ participation in the war in Bosnia and their interactions with the locals, combined with a paradigm-shifting analysis of jihad as a universalist movement. The comparison between the jihadists and the international peacekeepers was especially revelatory.
March 27, 2021
A beautifully written and thought-provoking book. rich in the empirics and challenging in methodology.
Despite what the title suggests, this is not really a book about jihad, but rather an ethnography of universalism(s). Using the Bosnian war and its aftermath as the arena, Li proposes that the meeting of universalisms-namely the jihad on one end, and non-alignment, international peacekeeping and later the War on Terror on the other- should not be read as clashes of one set of ideals against another, but that as an interstitial space where differences are processed. Where perennial questions of race and empire continue to work out behind the scenes.
Benefitting from Li’s unprecedented access as a lawyer-ethnographer and his keen eye for original documents, The Universal Enemy offers two key interventions on the idea of sovereignty. First, it processes the individual as the sovereign in the mujahids’ diasporic, transnational subjectivities, which functions to expose the limits of Empire, albeit at terrific personal costs. This provocation is only possible because of the second intervention, that is Li’s insight into Empire’s workings: not as a juggernaut that renders the sovereignty of other nations fictional, but as a ‘legal logic that channels, organizes, and legitimizes that domination through the agency of other states that are supposed to be independent and equal’. The power of Empire transcends, while individual courage transgresses.
In terms of shortcomings, as the book touches on Abdullah Azzam, it will be great if the book could spare a few pages to discuss his intellectual and political offsprings, whom Azzam may or may not view approvingly. How do we think about the jihad now considering some of the genealogy traced by Li continues into ISIS’s quasi-state, whose claim of sovereignty is based on individual acts of submission to the ‘caliphate’? Is this state-building exercise, futile it may seem, a signal of defeat in which solidarity is proven to be less useful a vessel to contend with Empire? And how does a jihad that started off with individual obligation (fardu ain) towards a fixed geographical battlefield turned into a war against all in multiple battlefields? To be sure, I am not suggesting the dramatis personae of the book will necessarily be drawn to every call of jihad. But the nature of the jihad seems to have changed and the mujahids have travelled, including one Reda Sayem who eventually joined ISIS as a ‘high ranking education official’. One may think this idea of a mobility-invoked-universalism may have statist pretensions after the jihad settles, if not physically then digitally.
Ultimately, Li is to be commended for writing such an original book in all its necessary unorthodoxy. The book is as much a scholarly as it is a humanitarian intervention, for it demonstrates the possibility of interrogating the global not in the words of dead white males but through ethnographies of the living. The living who continues to will universalisms into its textured existence through making exceptions and exemptions for love and war.
Despite what the title suggests, this is not really a book about jihad, but rather an ethnography of universalism(s). Using the Bosnian war and its aftermath as the arena, Li proposes that the meeting of universalisms-namely the jihad on one end, and non-alignment, international peacekeeping and later the War on Terror on the other- should not be read as clashes of one set of ideals against another, but that as an interstitial space where differences are processed. Where perennial questions of race and empire continue to work out behind the scenes.
Benefitting from Li’s unprecedented access as a lawyer-ethnographer and his keen eye for original documents, The Universal Enemy offers two key interventions on the idea of sovereignty. First, it processes the individual as the sovereign in the mujahids’ diasporic, transnational subjectivities, which functions to expose the limits of Empire, albeit at terrific personal costs. This provocation is only possible because of the second intervention, that is Li’s insight into Empire’s workings: not as a juggernaut that renders the sovereignty of other nations fictional, but as a ‘legal logic that channels, organizes, and legitimizes that domination through the agency of other states that are supposed to be independent and equal’. The power of Empire transcends, while individual courage transgresses.
In terms of shortcomings, as the book touches on Abdullah Azzam, it will be great if the book could spare a few pages to discuss his intellectual and political offsprings, whom Azzam may or may not view approvingly. How do we think about the jihad now considering some of the genealogy traced by Li continues into ISIS’s quasi-state, whose claim of sovereignty is based on individual acts of submission to the ‘caliphate’? Is this state-building exercise, futile it may seem, a signal of defeat in which solidarity is proven to be less useful a vessel to contend with Empire? And how does a jihad that started off with individual obligation (fardu ain) towards a fixed geographical battlefield turned into a war against all in multiple battlefields? To be sure, I am not suggesting the dramatis personae of the book will necessarily be drawn to every call of jihad. But the nature of the jihad seems to have changed and the mujahids have travelled, including one Reda Sayem who eventually joined ISIS as a ‘high ranking education official’. One may think this idea of a mobility-invoked-universalism may have statist pretensions after the jihad settles, if not physically then digitally.
Ultimately, Li is to be commended for writing such an original book in all its necessary unorthodoxy. The book is as much a scholarly as it is a humanitarian intervention, for it demonstrates the possibility of interrogating the global not in the words of dead white males but through ethnographies of the living. The living who continues to will universalisms into its textured existence through making exceptions and exemptions for love and war.
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