Ideologization of the Religion: The Thought and Practice of Violence in Jihadi Salafism

Aiming to give an applied analysis on the significance of ‘meaning system’ in the genesis, justification and direction of violent actions of Salafi radical groups, the present paper seeks to address the main question that ‘how can one relates political violence to religion’?    Building ona descriptive- analytical method for analyzing the data collected from library and internet resources, the paper articulates the data in a theoretical framework extracted from ideology studies. It is because the paper hypothesizes that the linkage between violence and religion in Jihadi Salafism might be found in the ideologization of the religion. Due to the reduction of religion to an ideology within Salafi fundamentalist / mythical approach, not only violence might be theoretically justified but also accompanied by some jurisprudential patterns for implementation. To explain, the paper initiates by highlighting the mechanism of justification of violence according to the radical Salafi worldview. Then, it concentrates on Nekayeh (destruction), Tavahosh (savagery), and Tamkin (establishment) as jurisprudential concepts, pointing to the justifiability of brutality as the necessary step in constructing the sovereignty, which actually serves jihadists` political strategy of obtaining, maintaining, and expanding the hegemony. The paper maintains that adapting such a theoretical framework helps to articulate the ‘politics of violence’ in Jihadi Salafism as a combinative phenomenon; containing both the traditional worldview (Salafism) and modern phenomenon (instrumental rationality aiming at domination). ISIS`s performance would provide relevant examples.