Violence in the Name of God

The Militant Jihadist Response to Modernity

Joel Hodge

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781350273115
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350104990
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Terrorism

This book traces the trajectory of militant jihadism to show how violence is more intentionally embraced as the centre of worship, social order and ideology.

Undertaking an in-depth analysis of militant jihadist groups and utilising the work of René Girard, Joel Hodge argues that the extreme violence of militant jihadists is a response to modernity in two ways that have not been sufficiently explored by the existing literature. Firstly, it is a manifestation of the unrestrained and escalating state of desire and rivalry in modernity, which militant jihadists seek to counter with extreme violence. Secondly, it is a response to the unveiling and discrediting of sacred violence, which militant jihadists seek to reverse by more purposefully valorising sacred violence in what they believe to be jihad.

Relevant to anyone interested in Islam, philosophy of religion, theology, and terrorism, Violence in the Name of God imagines new ways of thinking about militancy in the name of Islam in the twenty-first century.

Part I

The Context for Militant Jihadism

1

René Girard’s Mimetic Theory

This chapter provides an overview of the main insights of René Girard’s mimetic theory, as a foundation for the analysis of subsequent chapters. Girard’s work traversed a number of academic disciplines, including history, anthropology, literary studies, philosophy, biblical studies, and theology. Particular attention is given to Girard’s understanding of mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry (especially internal mediation), and the sacred, as these are key concepts deployed in this study. Girard’s theory is conventionally divided into three major parts:

1. Human desire is mimetic or imitated, that is, it is stimulated by others.

2. Human cultures use scapegoats or victims to resolve mimetic rivalry and violence in order to create and maintain cultural unity.

3. Biblical revelation reveals the innocence of the victim and the nature of the scapegoat mechanism and charts a positive way for structuring human desire in divine self-sacrificial love.¹

In the latter part of the chapter, I examine the implications of Girard’s insights for understanding Islam and explicate a brief understanding of modernity based on mimetic theory.

Mimetic Desire: A New Basis for Understanding the Human Person

Girard’s mimetic theory centers on one fundamental concept that has led to a reevaluation of human nature, violence, culture, and religion. This concept is “mimetic desire” (also called “triangular desire” or “imitative desire”), in which Girard identifies that humans desire according to the desire of another.² Girard argues that human desire emerges not for the other’s desire (the Hegelian view) but according to the other’s desire, that is, under the influence of mimesis. According to Girard, the origins of human relationality and self-identity, as well as culture, violence, and religion, are to be found in the imitative or mimetic dynamics of human desire. Girard uses the term “mimesis” to denote the social, interpersonal dimension of human desire so to differentiate his understanding from a popular notion of “imitation” as a type of mechanical copying. Girard regards mimesis as the dynamic force within the inner life of the human that brings persons into closer relationship with each other through shared objects and purposes.

The capacity to identify and be stimulated by others’ desires is so basic to human selfhood and sociality that humans generally do not even realize its true nature and influence.³ Jean-Michel Oughourlian, a psychiatrist who collaborated with Girard, argued that the mimetic insight can help to answer the most basic question of psychology: “Why is there movement rather than nothing?”⁴ Apart from physical appetites (required for survival), the subject is moved to desire by the identification of other people’s desires in a sophisticated imitative process. Girard’s notion of mimetic desire resonates with the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who observed that humans are the “most imitative” of animals⁵, as well as with more recent research that is demonstrating the importance of imitation to the lives and evolution of the human species.⁶ Such research has shown, for example, that imitation is a sophisticated capacity in which humans spontaneously engage from the earliest stages of life.⁷ Imitation enables humans to transcend their own limited consciousnesses and bodily needs, and it allows for an organic and efficient process of relating and learning. By imaginatively entering into the action and lifeworld of the other in a personal, but social, way, humans can share in common purposes or objects, providing a powerful basis for human bonding.⁸

A conscious self-identity emerges from the complex interplay of mimetic desire in relationship with others, which becomes capable of autonomous, self-determining action. However, imitation of the other’s form or what the other has is not sufficient on its own to produce a sense of “self.”⁹ The complex interaction of these two types of imitation with the temporal dimension of mimesis (repetition) produces a third sort of imitation: “Wanting to be who the other is.”¹⁰ Thus, the mimetic draw of the model in mediated autonomy enables and structures the human’s new-found “ontological need” to be: “A need which draws us to others and to imitate them in order to acquire a sense of being, something felt as a lack.”¹¹ As mimesis stimulates patterns of desiring and bonding within groups, it provides the means toward identity within and between people that answers the fundamental yearning for being, which Girard calls “metaphysical desire.”¹² Moreover, desire involves a certain fluidity and freedom that remains connected to but not determined by one’s social context. In this way, desire has a “metaphysical” character, as it enables a capacity for self-determination whose end is not predetermined, and which must be sought through relationships.

Girard’s view, furthermore, implies a reevaluation of the understanding of human consciousness, which is conceptualized in many fields (including in some evolutionary literature) in highly intellectual and individualistic terms. This also has important implications for how violence is understood. By understanding the precognitive nature of mimetic desire, consciousness can then be understood as the way we talk about “the relational (including, but not exhausted by, the linguistic) framework of human awareness and perception.”¹³ As one matures in the context of tightly bonded groups, human subjects are formed in their imaginative and interpretative skills in order to make decisions about what objects of desire to pursue and whether and how to pursue them, based on social interactions. The challenge for humans is how reliant they become on violent social structures and bonding to determine their mimetic identity and desires.

Mimetic Rivalry: The Key to Understanding Violence and Modernity

Girard’s insights into mimetic desire provide a powerful analytical tool to identify and understand patterns of desiring and relating in and across groups and how these patterns motivate violence through mimetic rivalry. Girard’s understanding of mimesis, then, helps to demonstrate how humans are formed relationally, but it also has the capacity to demonstrate why and how they engage in dangerous levels of violence.¹⁴ Girard’s understanding of the causes of human violence, however, contrasts with some conventional views about violence. He argues violence is customarily regarded as a result either of social or political factors (e.g., oppression) or of biological factors, as a spontaneous act of aggression from a subject to an object.¹⁵ Girard rejects these views as superficial in their portrayal of a “violent person” as somehow different and deviant from an otherwise peaceful human norm. Girard claims that, in fact, violence comes from competition and rivalry over shared desires, which implicates all humans in violence, not just “deviants.”¹⁶

Mimetic rivalry is a common occurrence across human groups and results from the distortion of mimetic desire through certain forms of acquisition and competition. Girard noticed that mimetic desire became pathogenic and distorted as objects of desire are fought over (rather than shared). A pathogenic denial of the other occurs when the model of desire becomes a rival to the subject who wishes to acquire what the model desires. The subject does this by grasping at the object of desire. In this circumstance, the subject asserts the ownership and priority of his/her desire over the other’s desire. As part of this assertion, the subject comes to believe in the autonomy of his/her own desire. On this basis, a delusion develops in which one believes one’s desire is spontaneously produced by the self rather than dependent on others. Girard calls this delusion a “romantic” sense of the self.¹⁷

Ultimately, the subject’s attempt to grasp at the other’s object of desire is an effort to gain the metaphysical or existential depth that the subject regards the model as having because he/she possesses a certain object of desire. The common result is that the model/rival feels his/her own desire heightened for the common object of desire because of the original subject’s desire for it. Both, then, seek to secure possession of the object, to the point that relations can become physically violent.

According to Oughourlian, recognition of the dynamics of mimetic desire in rivalrous circumstances is a difficult process—one with which human beings in general have struggled.¹⁸ The object of desire becomes so important to the two rivals that they cannot recognize how their mimetic desire is operating to cause and heighten their conflict. Interestingly, Girard observed that the focus of conflict shifts as mimetic rivalry escalates. Once the rivalry is established, as neither side backs off from their claims to the object, the rivals tend to become more focused on each other. They become mirrors or “doubles” of each other in their desires and actions (in what Girard calls “double mediation”), especially as they reciprocate and heighten the violent actions of the other.¹⁹ At this point of the rivalry, relations are dominated by a “tit-for-tat” attitude in which the original object of desire recedes into the background and is even forgotten. The rival, then, becomes the focus of scandal in a competition over identity and being.²⁰ The rivals now want to win that “being” by defeating the other, so that one’s very identity and social standing is at stake.²¹ The rival seems to possess the absolute certainty of being that must be conquered in order for one to achieve it. Thus, mimetic rivalry moves to the level of the metaphysical.

On this basis, Girard argues that violence and rivalry are not, in the first instance, caused by differences between human beings, such as differences over culture or religion or between “good” and “bad” people.²² On the contrary, humans come into conflict primarily over what they commonly desire but can’t share. These conflicts can escalate to the point that they fundamentally concern one’s identity. At this level, acquiring the object of desire by defeating the rival is about acquiring being through difference. By defeating the rival and acquiring the object, one shows oneself and others that “I” am better than the rival—that “I” possess “real” being and “deserve” the object of desire. Thus, a difference is constructed in the midst of sameness—the sameness that occurs through the mirroring of mimetic rivalry. Girard calls this a state of sameness “undifferentiation,” when nothing separates the rivals as they become like each other in their desires and actions.

Underlying mimetic rivalry is a fear of undifferentiation: of desiring the same objects because one’s rival does and so of being the same, or no better, than the rival. Thus, prior to acquisition, each human fundamentally fears that they have nothing of substance in oneself compared to the other—that one has no ontological or existential density, such that one’s appearance of substantiality is only a disguise. This fear leads the subject to grasp for being through that which animates being: desire. It leads the subject to seek greater differentiation from the other, to whom one is integrally bound in “borrowed desire,” that is, in rivalry.

In this way, human relations are conventionally structured by reciprocity, that is, by the imitation of desire which leads to actions that are received by the self and then given back to the other/model. For example, in violent rivalry, one responds to a violent gesture by the rival (that blocks one’s achievement of a desire) with another violent gesture (that seeks to clear the block or obstacle, or block the other from obtaining the object). The response can be immediate, without deliberation. It leads toward escalation in which greater violence is used to overcome the rival-obstacle.²³ As the rivalry intensifies, reciprocity becomes increasingly metaphysical, that is, the focus of the rivals moves away from acquiring an object to achieving identity and being through victory at any cost:

As rivalry becomes acute, the rivals are more apt to forget about whatever objects are, in principle, the cause of the rivalry and instead to become more fascinated with one another. In effect the rivalry is purified of any external stake and becomes a matter of pure rivalry and prestige. Each rival becomes for his counterpart the worshipped and despised model and obstacle, the one who must be at once beaten and assimilated.²⁴

Girard calls this state of r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Note on Permissions
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I The Context for Militant Jihadism
• Part II The Sacred Violence of Militant Jihadism
• Part III The Idolatry and Future of Militant Jihadism
• Appendix: René Girard at a Glance
• Glossary of Key Girardian Terms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page