The Rhetoric of Resistance: Islamism, Modernity, and Globalization

Theorizing rebellion seems a self-contradictory task. The moment one encapsulates, staticizes, and, in effect, institutionalizes rebellion in academized walls of theory, is the moment at which one has stripped rebellion of its dignity and, in some respects, of its purpose. Rebellion, as Albert Camus deanes it, is the right to determine one’s own boundaries. It is the right to assert the truth about one’s self. When individual identities are incorporated into a group for purposes of rebellion, there is always a risk that the “truth” the group asserts is not the same truth about one’s self. When the group obfuscates the individual’s potential to be heard, then the international community has a responsibility to question the veracity, representative quality, and legitimacy of the demonstrated rebellion. This is especially true in the modern era of integrated cultures, economies, and political decisions, where discrete group identities are increasingly difacult to uphold. However, even if the demonstrated rebellion by a group mischaracterizes the voice of disenfranchised individual members of the global community, the very presence of these groups is a signal that there are persons who do not have any purchase on or commitment to the emerging international legal normativity. There is a natural rebellious impulse in many individuals, regardless of their geographic or cultural location. That idea lies at the root of this Article. The modern phenomenon of Islamism has enjoyed increasing success in the past twenty years precisely because individual discontent in developing economies is rampant. Individuals in Islamist groups commit acts of political violence, often on behalf of those groups. This has led to the pandemonium we call “terrorism.” However, individual rebellious impulses are often co-opted by Islamist groups and this complicates unearthing the character of discontent. “Terrorism,” as a word, quickly becomes a bloated idea that ceases to communicate very much. This is a