‘In sha’Allah, Masha’Allah, Hopefully no martial law’: the disciplining of transnationalism and the attempted self-legitimisation of the so-called Islamic State

Abstract

Since 2001, Muslim minority communities have been subjected to disproportionate disciplinary State power, surveillance and legislation. Through the identity politics of the Global War on Terror, the mapping and labelling of network and subjective transnationalism have rendered followers of Islam as suspect, portrayed in a constant state of unbelonging. From the perspective of critical terrorism studies, I review how this disciplining of transnationalism has perpetuated monolithic correlations of terrorism and identity, setting the stage for the ‘transnational’ (self-)branding of the so-called Islamic State. This violent terrorist organisation’s founding declarations issue a call for immigration, projecting itself as a borderless, multilingual State for the transnational 'Islamic' Other. I scrutinise this projection through a multimodal Foucauldian discourse analysis of primary source materials published by the Islamic State. First, I examine liturgical texts as an instance of transidiomatic practices or language crossing. Then, I illustrate how these practices and their dissemination across social media platforms do the work of projecting the organisation’s legitimacy. I conclude discussing how, in an era of intense mediatisation, even the decentralisation of transnationalism can be reified and (re)packaged in the founding identifications of aspirational new ‘States’.

Biography