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How do militants rationalize violence and what are their motives? How do time and space shape their destiny? In Violence and Militants Baris Cayli explores these enduring questions by comparing violent episodes in towns and villages in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Balkans with today's zones of conflict from Afghanistan to the Middle East.
Placing history alongside the troubles of the present, Violence and Militants reveals parallels between Christian militants who rebelled against the Ottoman Empire and four jihadist organizations of today: Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and Isis. Drawing on scholarship by political theorists, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, Cayli traces the root of dissent to a perceived deprivation that leads to aggressive protest and action. He argues that the rationalization of violence functions independently of time and geographical location. Through a riveting narrative, this book uncovers how militant groups use revenge, ideals, and confrontation to generate fear and terror in the name of justice.
Breaking new ground, Violence and Militants is the first book to address this complex relationship across different periods of history.
"Violence and Militants is an insightful analysis focused on a key question: How do violent organizations and groups justify their use of violence in different times and places? In this empirically rich study Baris Cayli explores how structural and cultural violence operate in premodern and contemporary social contexts. Homing in on the behaviour of rebels and state authorities in the Ottoman world as well as violent organizations of today, this book offers a novel interpretation of the social processes involved in the rationalization and use of violence." Siniša Maleševic, University College Dublin
"Violence and Militants offers the reader an exciting journey to uncover the ravages of catastrophe." Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore and author of Political Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach
"A serious-minded and sophisticated treatment of a controversial and significant subject." Richard English, Queen's University Belfast and author of Does Terrorism Work?: A History
"Baris Cayli's approach through the prism of cultural and structural violence brings the kind of comparative study that I haven't seen anywhere else." Christophe Chowanietz, John Abbott College and author of Bombs, Bullets, and Politicians: France's Response to Terrorism
"The great strength of Violence and Militants is the way in which it utilizes the concepts of both cultural and structural violence and applies them to different instances of violence committed by militant groups across time and space. The comparison of the Ottoman rebellions with contemporary militant jihadist groups is unique and provides a different vantage point from which to view militant groups in varying sociopolitical contexts." Monica Ingber, Coventry University and author of The Politics of Conflict: Transubstantiatory Violence in Iraq