The grammar of sacred violence: A critical discourse analysis of radical Islamist writings

Abstract

This article offers a discursive analysis of two contemporary Islamist ⁸ texts that frame violence not as a deviation from religious normativity, but as its necessary and even redemptive expression. It examines Daʿwa al-muqāwama al-islāmiyya al-ʿālamiyya (The Call to Global Islamic Resistance) by Abū Muṣʿab al-Ṣūrī (2004) and De l’idéologie islamique française by Aïssam Aït-Yahya (2015), two ideologically distinct yet rhetorically potent works that articulate violence as an existential necessity. Although relatively unknown to the general public, al-Ṣūrī’s manifesto has become a foundational text within ǧihādist circles, serving as a discursive matrix for constructing violence as both theologically sanctioned and strategically necessary. Aït-Yahya’s essay, though more elliptical and less widely disseminated, plays a significant role in shaping ideological polarization within French Muslim contexts. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the article draws on critical discourse analysis to explore how sacred language, theological references, and affective strategies produce a grammar of legitimacy. From this perspective, radicalization is not approached as a deviant behavior, but as a discursive production—embedded in language, affect, and symbolic economy—that constructs violence as morally compelling and theologically grounded. The article also discusses how discursive structures may create potential openings for disengagement by revealing the interpretive tensions at the heart of radical narratives. It argues that understanding religious violence requires not only sociopolitical analysis but a careful reading of how language constructs normative obligations, moral antagonisms, and sacred temporality.