What is contemporary political violence? An interview with Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Abstract

Should “jihadist” violence be analyzed as a specificity of contemporary global conflict, or should we instead look at it in terms of broader and more encompassing historical dynamics, dynamics that characterize other religious traditions, as much as the other modes of political, cultural, and social thought of our times? In this interview, Professor Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou warns of the intellectual trap of taking violent actors at their word—a tendency all too present in contemporary analyses of jihadism, Islamic-inspired radicalization, and, more generally, religious justifications of violence.